


Rule #2

by universe_c



Series: Fifth Iteration [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Dubious Consent, Fifth Iteration 'verse, Human/Troll Hybrids, It's Caliborn, Mindfuck, Mpreg, Multi, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Time Travel, Violence, Xeno, so uh yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-25 00:44:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/universe_c/pseuds/universe_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All those people down in that village. Leave them alone. They defeated you once already when you were much, much stronger than you are now. And they will have no qualms about doing it again and fucking finishing the job. They didn't mean to bring you here with them. They don't want you around. They're afraid of you and that makes them dangerous. Like cornered animals.”</p><p>You stare at your older self, hating him as intensely as you've ever hated anything. He reaches down and grabs you by your shirt before you can slip away from him into Time.</p><p>“You don't know how to be who you are, yet. Only who you were. So, listen, you little shit. Rule number one is don't be an asshole. It's not hard to remember. Hard to follow sometimes. But not so hard you can't learn it. Asshole.”</p><p>A Fifth-Iteration 'verse fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Entrapment

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very, very much to both my betas, [Stella Omega](http://dharma-slut.dreamwidth.org/) and [quetserval](http://quietserval.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> You can now follow me on either [tumblr](http://universe-c.tumblr.com/) or on [Dreamwidth](http://universe-c.dreamwidth.org/), for update announcements, meta posts and extras.
> 
> Thanks to [Roach Patrol](http://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/pseuds/roachpatrol) for drawing this [awesome portrait of Cal](http://roachpatrol.tumblr.com/post/43446216135/caliborn-from-fifth-iteration-for-universe-c).

You wake up. 

You're lying on some kind of soft surface, a length of cloth draped over you. The wooden beams of the ceiling above are hung all over with bundles of drying plants. 

You sit up too fast and have to lay back down. 

“Woah,” someone says. “Here, I got you.” 

Hands touch your shoulder and the person helps you sit up. In a moment of wrung-out weakness you thrill at the gentle touch. You can't remember if you've ever been touched by another person before. Have you ever physically been in the same space as another person you weren't trying to kill? You're not sure. 

It will occur to you many hours from now that you should have been trying to kill this person, but by then you will understand what's stopping you.

He – you think he is male – is not a species you've ever seen before. He has the soft, thin skin of a human, though it and his shaggy white hair catch the light with a subdued purple iridescence. A pair of horns curve up over his forehead, ridged and forming a tight spiral. His eyes are a deep rusty orange, with white scleras. When he blinks, you can see a milky-opalescent membrane slide sideways across them.

“Caliborn?” he asks, returning your stare with a small smile. “Are you feeling all right?”

“No,” you growl. “Who the fuck are you?”

He sits back, his eyebrows lifting slightly.

“My name's Kharon. You don't remember me?” 

“Why would I?”

“Oh,” he says. 

His eyes fall to your bare forearm. Following his glance, you notice your own hand, your own skin. It is a few shades darker brown than his, with a weird deep green sheen that appears and disappears as you move. Looking closer, it seems the green shine is from the fine mammalian hairs sprouting all over your skin.

That is fucking disgusting.

“Wow,” Kharon says, watching you stare at your hands. “This you is really. Yeah. Okay, here.” 

He gets up for a moment, then returns with a small mirror. 

Your face is all wrong. 

No, you look like yourself, still, just with an ugly blob of a nose. Your bone structure is nearly the same, except for your teeth which are smaller, whiter and blunter in a way that makes you seethe. Instead of your handsome, familiar fangs, you now have a pair of horns with that same curve, projecting up from the top of your head. Your eyes seem to be permanently stuck with one a deep 7-ball red and the other a 5-ball orange. Your skin is brown all over, except for where it's reddish-pink on your palms and lips, the inside of your mouth. You have human-style head hair, a mere fuzz on your formerly smooth scalp. Like the hairs on the backs of your arms, it's green-white, your eyebrows and eyelashes pale against your face.

You look like a freak. 

“You look just like you always do,” he says. “Well. Younger than I'm used to.”

“Stop reading my mind!” you snarl, and, yes, there is your anger. It is as lived-in as second skin, as tired and distant as this strange body you're wearing

“I'm not!” he protests. “Your feels are loud as a motherfucker, is all. The rest is just educated guesses.” 

He backs off a little. Irrationally, it makes your hackles go back down. He gives you that small smile again, and it makes your stomach roil when you realize it's _kind._ Ugh. Your limbs are traitorously weak and when you reach for your Time shit, there's nothing there. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“There, that's a bit better,” Kharon says. “If you don't want every empath in the village to know you're out here, you might want to try and keep a lid on that. Sorry if that's hard for you. Faye is on her way over, anyway. She's bringing us food. When Aunt Jane came by and checked you, she said you just needed to sleep and eat.”

“What village? What is this place?”

“Uh. Well, there is only the one. This is my Mom's place. I'm house-sitting for him, though, while he's off on pilgrimage. That's what he calls it anyway. Really, he's just hanging out with y- uh, a friend of his. If you don't mind me asking, what's the last thing you remember?”

You remember the Miles and the crack of Hope-fueled gunshots. You remember fighting for your life, retreating, trying to get away. You remember a yank that seemed to come from somewhere both inside and behind your brainstem. Sunlight violent on your eyes, then flickering. The sky wheeling in a chaos of moons and stars, trees growing then disappearing around you as the rocks melted away. Looking down and finding the sea foaming against high cliffs, the land about to erode right out from under you. Hurling yourself away in a panic. The moons lurching back the other way, and your impotent rage as you realized you could still move freely through time, but were rooted in one place while doing so.

“Fighting,” you mutter. “And then, Time shit. And then, walking. I hate walking.” 

You look down at yourself, remembering that you have your right leg back, even though the feet are unclawed and nothing like your own real feet. You struggle to resent it.

“Do you want me to get Dirk?” Kharon asks. 

You heart leaps at the name and you immediately hate Dirk and yourself and this weird purple dude with every fiber of your being. 

“Strider?” you growl.

“The one and only,” Kharon says. “Maybe want isn't quite the right word, but-”

But you do want him there, you realize, if only for presence of something, _anything_ familiar. The thought tamps down your strange numbness, makes you feel more like yourself. You wonder if he'll greet you with the tip of his sword. 

“I can always tell when you need him,” Kharon finishes. “You should really drink some water.”

He presses a wooden cup into your hand. You glare at him while he settles back in the chair at your bedside and closes his eyes. His lips twitch into a half-smile. 

“I don't hear you drinking,” he says. 

You glare another moment to show he's not the boss of you. When you raise the cup to your lips, the smell and taste and feel of clean water is overwhelming. You very carefully don't make any noise as you drain the cup dry.

Kharon opens his eyes again. He pours you more water without asking if you want it. “They'll be here soon,” he says. “Try to sip it slowly.”

You ignore him and drain the cup in one go. He sighs at you kind of fondly. After a moment the silence begins to border uncomfortably on companionable. 

“Why do you know me?” you ask, abruptly. “Who the fuck even are you?”

“I've known you my whole life. Non-linearly, of course. You never could stand playing by the rules.”

There is a knock from the room's single, open door. You judge that it must lead outside because of how the sunlight falls through it. 

Someone enormously tall and rail-thin steps inside. She's barefoot and dressed in a feminine, ankle-length white shift, though her chest is flat as a board. Her tumbling mass of brown, indigo-sheened curls is shaved on one side, and her horns are extremely thick and heavy-looking, curling from the sides of her head up into a graceful lyre-shape. They very nearly brush the ceiling beams. Her features have a certain sameness to Kharon's, especially around their sharp noses and jaws. He stands to take the baskets out of her hands.

“Faye!” Kharon smiles. “Thanks for playing runner, yet again.”

“Heya, Cuz,” Faye says in a husky, smoky drawl, “Ain't no thing. Been meaning to up and visit you anywhichway. Uncle Dirk was right behind me. Ain't as young as he used to be, I guess.” 

“Still young enough to kick your punk asses all over the strife-yard,” someone says. 

Oh, fuck. That voice sounds so much like and nothing like you remember. You're not sure which is stranger, seeing Dirk without his shades, seeing him with half-heart horns curling down around his face, his teeth and movements too sharp to be human, or seeing him so _old_. He's shorter than either Faye or Kharon, broad-shouldered and solid with the muscles of a warrior and a smith, midsection gone a little soft. Fine nets of wrinkles web the corners of his eyes and crease his forehead. It's like a punch to the gut.

“I always wondered when you went, after we all first arrived,” he says. His amber eyes are frank and appraising, and you find yourself locked onto them, trying to stare him down. 

“Two rules,” he tells you, “Don't be an asshole and no spoilers. And before you go getting all bent out of shape, I should tell you that you and I made those up together and agreed they made shit easier. By the time you get to that conversation, you'll know why.” 

“Fuck you,” you snarl at him. You can't decide whether you want him to come closer or turn around and walk back out the door. 

He quirks an eyebrow and it's so familiar on him it makes you ache. Fuck, why does he always have to be so cool about everything? You are tied in so many knots you think your internal organs might stage a violent break for freedom up your throat. 

Across the room, Kharon is puttering around at a tall sideboard. Faye slouches against it, ankles crossed, watching you with a calm and vaguely amused eye. Dirk stands straight and skeptical in the sunlight falling through the door. He holds a polished walking stick in one hand, though he leans no weight on it.

Dirk sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Let me guess,” he says. “You were wondering if I was going to bust in here with my sword.” 

“No!” you say, and shit, that was much too quick and too defensive.

“You're blushing, Uncle Cal,” Faye points out gently. You snatch at the mirror, still laying on the bed next to you. Your face is red and hot with pooling blood, though it's hard to tell through the brownness of your skin.

Kharon elbows Faye. “Don't,” he says. “We should all just eat something and we'll probably all feel better.” 

By all you're pretty sure he means you, since you're the only one flipping your shit here. You have absolutely every reason to flip your shit. Not that you've ever needed reasons, excuses or justifications before. 

Kharon presents you with a plate of cold, sliced meat and fruit with a square of something crumbly and brown and sweet-smelling. Dirk lowers himself into the chair at your bedside and accepts a similar plate. Kharon and Faye sit side by side on the little counter, their shoulders touching casually. She is left-handed and he is right-handed, you notice.

Like with the water, you can't stop yourself once you begin. The brown square is the best fucking thing you've ever tasted in your life. The meat is rich and sating and even the fruit is not safe from your onslaught. 

“Mom and Aunt Jane fucking outdid themselves with this new cake recipe,” Faye comments. 

“I still can't believe that Vriska actually found chocolate on this backassward rock,” Dirk says. “Or, maybe I just can't believe that it took her so damn long. Next thing you know we'll have coffee.” 

“All's I know is, the craziness we went through trying to ferment it and shit – so worth it. This is a motherfucking gift to future generations, here,” Faye says, her mouth full of cake. “You like it, Uncle Cal? Or, maybe you up and eat it every day in the future.” 

You glower at her, unwilling to admit to Dirk you've never eaten cake before. “Shut your snack-hole and give me another piece.” 

“Rule one,” Dirk says

But Faye smiles easily at you and slides an enormous chunk of cake onto your plate. 

“We'll all blame you when he heaves,” Dirk says.

You eat all of it. You defiantly don't heave, and you resist the urge to clutch your stomach and moan. Kharon eyes you like he might move in for a tummy rub, but leaves you alone when you bare your teeth at him. The three of them make small talk, leaving you to loll numbly on the bed and listen. Your frustration just doesn't seem to amount to much of anything, welling up in waves and running out of you like you have some kind of leak in your feelings containment system. You answer their occasional questions in as few syllables as you can. 

Dirk is still there when you drop abruptly and embarrassingly into sleep, but gone when you wake up again. Kharon is gone also and Faye is folded into the chair, sleeping in an unkempt ball of limbs. Blue-silver light falls in the window, limning her thick horns, the dark mass of her curls. You pull the cloth cover off of you, letting it drop wherever. You stand, sway, and stubbornly keep your feet. 

What are you still doing here?

Like blood from a scab peeled away, all the hate and rage that make you yourself bubble up inside you. It's such a relief you nearly laugh out loud. 

“Uncle Cal?” Faye murmurs, waking. Her big eyes roam over you and your anger banks a little. The idea of watching her bleed out suddenly loses some of its appeal. 

“You're doing that,” you accuse her. “Changing what I think. Are you afraid of what I might do? You should be.”

“I've seen you pull some unfortunate shit,” she rumbles, softly. “Usually turns out just as unfortunate for your own self as anyone else.”

“He was doing it, too. Not Dirk, the one who looks like you. Taking away my – me.” 

“A motherfucking Rogue of Rage is made to help folks get their chill on. He can't hardly help it, like. Wouldn't do a thing to up and hurt you, anywhichways. He loves you.” 

You choke on your gasp. 

“Who is he?” you demand. Your hands are shaking. Your knees are shaking.

She grins at you, her face pulling into an alarming moonlit mask. “If you don't up and know already, ain't my place to tell.”

Abruptly she rises, looming over you in the dark room. You barely come up to her shoulder, she's so tall. You stand your ground, turning your glower on her with as much whitehot rage behind it as you can muster. 

She chuckles, then folds over you and twines her long arms around your back, leaning her cheek against your temple. 

“Shit's gonna be bad for you at first,” Faye murmurs in your ear, and her hug is suddenly a cage you are unable to break out of. Her voice is intimate and dangerous with the chill of prophecy. “But remember this afternoon with your family and your moirail and the best motherfucking chocolate cake in history.”

She lets you go and steps out of the way of the wild punch you throw at her. 

“Dirk said not to keep you when you up and want to leave,” she comments, her voice back to her normal, lazy drawl. She plucks something from the counter top and thrusts it into your hands.

It's a little packet of cake, wrapped in grease-stained paper.

You can't formulate a comeback to this fuckery. Instead you let yourself move sideways into Time. 

You're tired, still, so you don't move very fast – just fast enough that people coming and going are invisible. 

You slip back into a random day, growling at the dull ache behind your eyes. 

“Daddy!” a small, high-pitched voice cries, and something hits your knees and clings there. Your first instinct is to detach yourself in Time again, but as you begin to slip away from the present the small body attached to your legs comes with you. Fuck. 

You grab it by one of its twisty little horns and wrench its head back. An unseen hand seems to grab you by the root of your rage and suddenly you can't move.

MY LORD DO YOU NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR SCION?

You recognize that mental voice, like talons tracing the inside of your skull. It is your follower, one of the ones who paved the way for your arrival. He is standing across the room, dark clothed and eerily silent. 

You look more closely at the child in your grasp. Its horns sit on its skull at the same aggressive angle yours do. Its fine, white hair and dusky skin have an indigo sheen, but its eyes are the exact same deep orange you saw on yourself in the mirror. It has your follower's strong nose set between your brow and cheekbones.

It looks exactly like a cross between you and the clown. If it weren't for his hold on your rage, you're fairly sure anger would drown out this sinking sense of panic. 

“How did this happen?” you hiss at him. He raises an eyebrow.

COME AWAY, KHARON. WE DO NOT HANG ON THE MOTHERFUCKING LORD OF TIME.

The child squeezes your knees once more, then lets you go, his horn sliding out of your slack grip.

“Don't be scared, Daddy! We wouldn't hurt you!” he chirps.

The mental grip on you eases off as the child backs away. 

Your heart is pounding like it's out to shatter every bone in your chest. 

You abscond. The house is abruptly unbuilt around you, exposing you to the flicker of the sky. You hurl yourself back and back into a time when you're sure there are no other people on the entire planet. You realize you've somehow lost your packet of cake. You scream into the empty wilderness until your voice gives out and your throat closes, choked with anger.

~

This time when you wake there is another you sitting by your side. It takes a moment for your addled brain to match up his features with the ones you saw in the mirror. He's older, taller and more muscular than you, though he has nowhere near the mass your real body had. You have been reduced, aged down, shrunk, and apparently you never get it back. His hair is shaved into a simple white cap and his jawline is notched with an old scar. He's dressed in leather like some kind of FLARP reject, his pointed ears pierced with a collection of gold studs, and his forearm is covered in tattoos of red and black interlocking gears. In short he looks like a total douche. 

He eyes you with something stomach-churningly close to pity.

“What the fuck do you want?” you snarl. 

“Oh,” he says. “Right. I've been sitting here trying to remember what the fuck I said to myself when I woke up. It's been a long time.”

“And what I said was. What. The fuck. Do. You. Want?”

“I'm here to stop you from doing anything utterly fucking stupid. Because I remember how fucking stupid the things I really wanted to do were, when I was you.” His mouth lifts into something too sad to be a sneer. It is not an expression that belongs on your face, ever. “There are better reasons for this. But I'm going to give you the one I know will get through to you. All those people down in that village. Leave them alone. They defeated you once already when you were much, much stronger than you are now. And they will have no qualms about doing it again and fucking finishing the job. They didn't mean to bring you here with them. They don't want you around. They're afraid of you and that makes them dangerous. Like cornered animals.”

You stare at your older self, hating him as intensely as you've ever hated anything. He reaches down and grabs you by your shirt before you can slip away from him into Time.

“You don't know how to be who you are, yet. Only who you were. So, listen, you little shit. Rule number one is don't be an asshole. It's not hard to remember. Hard to follow sometimes. But not so hard you can't learn it. Asshole.”

He lets you go and blinks out in front of your eyes. Smug arrogant fuck. You will never be that guy, you swear to yourself. Never, never, never.

It starts to rain lightly as you sit, definitely not sulking, in the soft leaf-litter you flung yourself down on hours ago. This place is nothing like the planet in your session. For one thing, it's crawling with life and every fucking bit of it is eye-wateringly fucking colorful. Small lizardy-looking birds hop around in the trees and underbrush. Insects clamor over your skin occasionally, and you take pleasure in smearing each one to paste between your blunted claws. 

On the other hand, it is huge and empty like the planet in your session. You are the only person in the whole world, right now. You have no quests, no guides or mysterious text prompts to interact with. There's no one to troll or watch and no computer to do it on, no fanfiction to peruse in a trance of horror, no chess set, no other side of the room to defile in your frustration. You tear up a few flowers, but it's unsatisfying and barely makes a dent in the sheer volume of ugly rainbow-leaved plants all around you.

You can either sit here or walk. You hate walking.

You must be fucking traumatized, you think. Why else would the idea of being by yourself set you on edge?

Your stomach growls. You can't fucking believe you lost that cake.

~

You take down a small, delicate-boned deer, emerging from outside time and snapping its neck as it stands oblivious in a glade.

You stand over it as its eyes roll and go flat. 

Fuck. Now what? 

Your near-useless claws don't do a hell of a lot in the way of penetrating its thick skin. You have to saw and saw at it with your sharpest teeth, pausing every once in a while to scrape a wad of hair off your tongue. Eventually, you manage to rip a flap open, and start gnawing at the raw muscle underneath. Its blood is metallic and alien in your mouth. Its flesh goes down in queasy, rubbery ribbons and chunks. Your jaw muscles ache.

“Who's there?” a voice asks. 

You whirl, teeth bared in your gore-smeared face.

It's the same girl you saw with your son's older self, though she is not quite so toweringly tall. She looks raw-boned and half finished, her heavy horns slightly smaller, her half-shaved hair wild and unkempt. She is holding a bow, an arrow in one hand but not notched. 

“You,” you growl, and smirk to yourself as she starts. 

“Motherfuck, Uncle Cal,” she says. “Don't bother cooking that shit up or nothing. Hope you don't get worms.”

“Who is it, Faye- oh,” someone says. 

A man you don't recognize steps out of the trees. He is powerfully built and his horns are huge and thick and sweepingly wide. He is brown from mohawk to leather-moccasined foot, his ears and septum pierced with silver hoops. 

“It's just Uncle Cal, Dad,” Faye says. “Young Uncle Cal, though. You up and want some help fucking butchering that? Or is this one of them mysterious, abscond-the-moment-he-gets-caught-lurking-around yous?”

She gives you a cheeky, dimpled smile. The man she called Dad is looking at you narrowly, but neutrally. His throat works a little. 

“I told Dirk you're here,” he says, sounding almost apologetic about it. “In case you want to see him.”

“I could kill you both before he gets here. I could kill you both before you could even _scream.”_ you tell them.

There is no air, suddenly. You choke, your lungs working on nothing. Your vision is starting to go gray around the edges when sweet oxygen returns. You crouch over your kill, glaring murder at the pair of them as your chest heaves embarrassingly. 

“I think you'll find, that that's not the case, anymore,” Faye's Dad says. His lightly halting voice still sounds like an apology, but this time there's steel under it.

“I ain't defenseless, either, dude,” Faye says, and, almost too fast for you to follow her arrow appears quivering in a tree across the glade. The Time-trail of its past movements shows it flew a handspan from the side of your face. 

A short, gravelly laugh tears out of your aching chest. When was the last time you laughed? You can't recall. It had to be a lot more maniacal and probably felt better than this laugh did.

“Your fucking pointy shooting stick toy could never touch me. I'm the fucking Lord of Time,” you tell her. 

“Made you laugh!” Faye says, sounding delighted. Her father hides a smirk behind his big hand. 

Someone calls your name, footsteps thrashing through the underbrush. It's a light tenor you almost recognize. 

Oh no. Oh fuck no. A teenaged Kharon charges right at you when he sees you, his hands reaching forward to get a hold of you, to keep you prisoner in this awkward as fuck moment. Your blood runs icy. The last thing you see as you blink into the past is the crushing disappointment on his face.

~

Mentally, you slap a big, blinking 'do not enter' sign around the whole stretch of years where you might encounter your 'son.' Unfortunately, that creates a big overlap with the years in which you might encounter Dirk, and Dirk is the only person you think you could stomach a conversation with, possibly ever. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck._

Every particle of you hates the idea of having a 'son,' even as some deep, Timey intuition refuses to let you disbelieve it.

There must be a way you can prevent this travesty from taking place. The idea of engaging in whatever grotesque physical practices your new body would engage in to reproduce is nearly as offensive as the way the little shit's presence severs you from everything that makes you yourself. Like your deep-seated, omnidirectional hostility. Like your will to murder even one of those interfering insects who dared to trap you here then turn around and be so familiar and so fucking _kind_ to you.

When could you strike at them, to undo all this ridiculous fucking bullshit?

Early, before they've established themselves. Or maybe if there's a time when there are fewer people around the village. Maybe a time when Dirk isn't even fucking there to try and get in your way with his high-horse rules and gracefully aging body.

First, though, you're going to have to figure out where the fuck this village even _is_. You curse again and again the fact that you can't move around while you're outside Time. You're going to have to chance walking around unprotected and hope that you don't run into anyone. 

You take a couple of deep breaths, trying to apply some fucking logic to this shit. Maybe it would be helpful to run into someone, actually. Someone you could follow back to their lair. A guide.

You could probably get your 'son' to take you there, you think. But that would mean one, encountering him again, two, having to be in his presence for some amount of time, and three, having to somehow get away from him. Not worth it, you decide. 

Instead you wander around a little until you stumble back on a place you think you recognize. Space is your horrible bitch sister's thing, so you're not as sure as you could be. But you're fairly sure this is the same place you were standing when you first appeared on this hell-planet, a little hollow in the folds of the chalk ridge that runs inland from the sea. Carefully, you wind yourself forward, watching for the tiny instant between when you arrived and when you launched yourself into Time. It flashes by and you keep winding slowly. You hiss to yourself as your fucking sister appears through the trees, looking just like her stupid, terrible trollsona. She runs to the place past-you no longer stands. She looks around a few moments, then walks away. You note the direction she went, move yourself back a few weeks in Time and start walking. 

Reeling yourself back and forth like this, you manage to find the Door and the astounding pile of crap that gets ejected through it from the previous session. You are sort of starting to understand what the fuck happened to bring you here, though you don't know and don't care how they actually accomplished it. 

There are a fuck of a lot of people who got pulled through like you did. Grudgingly, you acknowledge that future-you was right to warn you. You don't have any weapons, you're completely by yourself, and your Time shit is a shadow of its former awesomeness. You will have to be careful, sneaky.

You recognize a number of them: Dirk and his friends, your sister, Faye's dad, your backstabbing clown guide and your other two followers from your sister's dumb fanfiction. The rest seem vaguely familiar, probably either because you killed them or their alternate selves at some point, or because they at some point were trying to kill you. The way they're all _embracing_ each other in the tangled wreckage that spilled out of the Door makes you ill and furious. You push yourself forward in time too quickly and have to rewind until there is someone there again.

It is the Timewitch, one of those who served you in your rise to power. You watch as she telekinetically lifts a slab of white stone into place, marking the Door's location in the empty clearing. Then she turns and looks right at you, as if she can see you standing there outside Time. For you, the look is brief, traveling as you are in the opposite direction. But it makes the hairs on your arms lift in strange, prickly-feeling reaction. They have Time players too, you remind yourself. Even if one of them is yours. 

At least you hope she's still yours. She's one premium bitch, even if she is a half-human weird alien and a girl.

You watch for a while, but at no point do the villagers leave the pile alone so you can dart in and grab a gun or something. Stitching back and forth through time, you follow them as they move all that random ass junk down a steep path and into a neighboring river-valley. Standing on the bluff's edge, you can wind yourself forward and watch their pathetic houses and gardens and workshops build themselves, seemingly out of nothing. You slide yourself further and further forward, watching the houses multiply into far more than the thirty-odd people who came through with you could possibly need. 

You have to stop this future from happening. You are the Lord of Time and the Timestream will mold itself to your will. Your defeat and imprisonment in this place will prove their downfall. You will obliterate them all, as is your destiny.

~

Your attempts to kill their crops prove futile and fucking frustrating in the extreme. You find yourself able to accelerate or rewind the age of objects, but only if you're touching them. You get about ten feet down a garden row of what you assume are food plants – you've never known or cared what the fuck vegetables look like when they're growing – aging each plant into withered, brittle death individually.

This is stupid, you decide. Your awesome Time-disintegration beams would be so fucking handy about now. Besides, you keep having to pop outside of normal Time at every little sound, trying to avoid getting caught. You're getting tired and hungry and so fucking angry again it's ruining your concentration. You rewind yourself back to the pre-settlement past to rest. 

Fuck it, you decide. You're just going to kill them off one by one. It will be more personal that way. You'll leave a trail of bodies and terror back and forth through their history until their whole Timeline comes crashing down around them. 

You decide on the beach as a good place to pick someone off when they're by themselves. Few people would be in earshot, there, and any who were would have to struggle over the dunes to get there. Besides, you still stink like that deer's blood, and you'll probably stink even worse after a couple of nice murders.

You walk down there, thrashing through the beach grass and getting sand all in your shoes. They fill up again as soon as you empty them. You pick a good spot and scroll through time until someone is there. Someone unsuspecting. Someone vulnerable. 

Except not at all. Because when you jerk into the present the Timewitch is already holding your hand, as if she plucked you from the Timestream herself. She smiles at you like she's actually happy to see you. People smiling at you makes you sick as fucking fuck, people grabbing you is even worse, and anyone else fucking with your Time shit is like the most egregious insult imaginable. You snarl at her. She smiles some more, leans in - she is also taller than you, you notice, fucking bitch - and kisses your cheek gently. 

“Come back when you done running,” she murmurs, her accent and diction bizarre and broken.

You stumble back a few steps until you are pressed against the sun-warm cliff face, willing your toes to uncurl. A touch lets you age forward a whole interior plane of the rock, shoving it through time with all your strength. It crumbles, slips, and a massive blade of rock slides right over you and inexorably down toward the Timewitch. You can feel the alarmed yank of her powers, trying to reverse, to slow the rock as it falls. You are stronger. She looks you full in the face, closes her wide, rust-red eyes, then lets go of Time all at once.

The atom-thin edge of the rock bisects her at an angle from shoulder to hip. It's gloriously gory, her red blood splashing all over you in warm gouts.

You hear a small, high scream. You look over and discover your audience.

Half the village is ranged along the beach, watching you, including a whole gaggle of multicolored children. It was one of them who screamed, and the others are crying and looking ill. The adults look pretty grim as well. The one that is a paler, taller copy of Dirk steps toward you, hand on his sword. 

You drop the Timewitch's severed arm onto the sand and launch yourself into your sanctuary, the distant past. Emerging into regular Time, you indulge in a good, long bout of maniacal laughter. That will show those fucking morons who they're dealing with. You are the Lord of Time, and all of Time is yours to pick them off one by one. They'll be sorry for fucking trapping you here. You'll make them sorry they were ever _born._

Your moment of triumph is completely ruined when your traitorous body starts puking.

You retch until you're a wrung out husk, undigested raw meat forming a nasty, quivering pile. The metallic stink of her blood is all over you, cloying as it dries. Gagging, you stagger toward the ocean. It is further off in this time, the river valley noticeably narrower. 

You wade right in in all your clothes, even your shoes, which are filled with so much blood and sand that it squishes gritty around your toes. Teeth clenched, you divest yourself of each item, swirling them in the water and watching the blood spatters dissolve into stains. Your black shirt isn't too bad, but your pants are a fucking mess. You scrub your skin with your too-soft hands. You realize there's even some blood getting crusty in your hair. 

When you duck under the water, something bizarre happens to your neck, a sort of tingly fluttery rush like it's been painlessly sliced open on both sides. You clutch at it, thoughtlessly jam one of your stupid, blunt fingers into the weird slit, and aaaauuugh, that _sucks._

You surface, choking, eyes smarting from the salt and pain. Looking back up the beach you can see the protrusion of the canyon wall that will become your first murder weapon on this forlorn assbutt planet. 

Your howl echoes back to you off the rocks and trees. No one is there to fear you.

When you finally feel cleanish, you realize that one of your shoes has been washed away somewhere, lost.


	2. Rage

Every time you close your eyes, you see blood everywhere.

The sunlight is red behind your eyelids, the memory of the Timewitch's beautiful demise red all over your mind's eye. 

Your Timesense informs you it has been a good twenty eight subjective hours and several hundred sweeps of total travel since you last slept. You are so fucking tired, your eyes feel like they might melt into molten slag.

You can't sleep. Your stupid body is too keyed up, adrenaline-shaky and tense. Your stupid brain is as full of blood as your lost shoe was. You are hungry again, though the sickly bite of bile lingers in the back of your throat. You think you can still smell blood under all the ocean-stench on your clothes. Fuck, there was a reason you preferred machine gun-kind and Time-disintegration beams and shit. Neater. Less personal.

You wiggle your toes in the grass, stubbornly keeping your eyes closed. You try as hard as you can to ignore the feeling of bugs crawling on you. Your planet never had any bugs. Only ugly statues and sand and rocks that were cold and sharp when you laid on them. 

You deliberately don't think about how much more of the Timeline you have just effectively locked yourself out of. Your 'Do Not Enter' period has now expanded to include any time between the Timewitch's death and some nebulous future when it will have been forgotten, a time when everyone you know is dead. 

Unless, of course, you're going in there to kill someone else in front of a bunch of children and all their friends. Right, you should be planning that shit while you're laying here not sleeping.

You wonder if you should kill all the Time players off first. The Timewitch was able to break your path through the Timestream. If you don't want to be stopped or tracked, it would probably be smart.

You should probably off Jake English ASAP, just for being such a fucking perky annoying asshole. And Dirk, should you be merciful and kill him soon, too? Make sure that he's not around to try and fuck with you? Or would it be better to avoid him, leave him powerless as you pick off his friends one at a time, and laugh as he fails, utterly fails to save any of them?

No, you decide, your next target will be your stupid bitch sister. The her-shaped hole in you has healed itself, just like you always knew it would eventually. You doubt any of the villagers will even miss a useless, sugary lump like her. You know you won't.

You wonder if her ugly stupid blood will be the same, greener and greener against the ugly gold of her dress. Ribbons of acid green power curling everywhere. Red and green and white lashing through the crack-mazed reaches of the void as you dodge and dodge. The hateful, growing awareness that you yourself shattered any semblance of safety for anyone in the multiverse, and now that you're being pursued, you have nowhere to retreat. 

The deep shock as you fail, actually fail to dodge the Miles, and your shoulder dissolves into a hot plume of particles.

You jolt up, remembering and dreaming, floundering in the shallowest reaches of sleep. 

The sun has sunk down behind the mountains, its light staining the sky a frail yellow. Your eyes are sandpapery and raw and your mouth tastes like death upon death upon death.

~

The main problem with the distant past is that there's nothing to eat there. You stubbornly hold out as long as you can, an entire day of aimless pacing around the empty valley, feeling your stomach pinched tight around itself. You are hungry enough to gnaw the bark off a tree, except that you categorically hate all vegetables and trees definitely fall in that category.

That's the only reason you decide to go back to the village. You make your way up to the top of the bluff slowly, your head swimming with the effort of walking, the lack of sleep, your lack of blood sugar. It would be dangerous for you to encounter the wrong person in your condition. You have to be careful. You nearly fall so many times you lose count. 

You avoid the Door, find your feet taking you automatically to that familiar notch in the ridge where you first appeared. 

You sit for a while, just trying to keep your shit together. Goddamn it, having a body never used to be this hard, you don't think. You can't really remember jack shit right now, though. 

With a desperate burst of effort, you haul yourself forward in Time. 

What the fuck possessed you to go so far back? You don't stop for fear you'll end up trapped alone and starve to death in the unreachable past. But fuck it's hard, so hard. Every flash of the sun overhead seems to sear a place deep in your hindbrain. You have a relatively narrow window of Time to shoot for, so you can't just throw yourself forward willy-nilly like some kind of asshole.

You wrench your eyes open just in time to catch a familiar, wild-haired silhouette. You collapse into a moonlit present. You try to bring yourself to call for help.

You cannot bring yourself to do any such thing. Fuckity fuck. Maybe you deserve to die like this, wallowing in your own melodramatic misery, starving to death just in reach of the pack of fucking imbeciles you're trying so hard to decimate.

MY LORD?

It's not your former guide, then, but the other clown. His mental voice sends frigid chills from the base of your skull all the way to your tailbone.

Hands land on you, large and hesitant.

You pry your eyes open again, let your gaze wander up the black-clad expanse of him. His face is smooth and impassive, unpainted, set in a small, meaningless smile.

You wish, fiercely, that he could just tell what you needed without your having to ask. 

He nods, producing a twist of dried meat from somewhere on his person. You don't give two shits where he got it, frankly, you just snatch it from his fingers and shove it into your mouth. It tastes amazing, almost disgustingly salty and so good. You suck on it a while, trying to collect the energy to chew. He shakes a pouch at you next, and the water inside helps you wash down the jerky he feeds you, one frustratingly small scrap at a time. 

He is a Rage Player, you remember, like your supposed offspring and that tall bitch who fucking hugged you. But you feel none of that suppression that you felt from Kharon or Faye, and nothing like the threatening hold he took of your mind when you first encountered him. In fact you feel more and more like yourself the more calories he gets into you.

You could kill him easily right now. He kneels before you unguarded, proffering a strange looking piece of fruit. You could kill him with a touch, dissolve him into rot and dust.

I AM YOURS TO KILL, MY LORD. OR YOURS TO MOTHERFUCKING COMMAND. 

You start. That's right, these creepy assholes can read your mind. You slap the fruit out of his hand. It flies off somewhere into the shadowed underbrush. 

“Get the fuck out of my head, clown,” you snarl. His smooth smile never wavers. 

DID YOU NOT WISH ME TO ANTICIPATE YOUR NEEDS?

You did wish that, didn't you. And he's not, as far as you can tell, manipulating your mind. You don't think. 

“Just, just don't-” You sigh, your delirious tiredness crashing back down on you. “Don't fucking mess around in there. Consider that a fucking command.” 

OF COURSE, MY LORD.

He bows his head again, as if offering himself up to you. When you close your eyes, your mind's eye fills with blood, red and thick and splattering. You wonder if he can tell. You wonder what he makes of it. 

I WILL KEEP WATCH, IF YOU WISH TO SLEEP.

Your head lolls. You suspect you don't have a choice, seeing as you're about to pass out. 

Much later, you manage to open your eyes and immediately find them speared on a shaft of sunlight. You groan, curling over onto your side. Miles boil through your skull and you jerk awake.

You are lying in a soft patch of moss, a rough length of cloth over your shoulders. Your bare feet are a little cold in the light breeze. 

The clown must have moved you in your sleep. You wonder how long it's been. Thirteen and a half hours, your Timesense whispers.

He glides back into the clearing as you sit up, a basket of berries perched on one hip.

HUNGRY, MY LORD?

“Yes,” you growl. 

Berries. They're surprisingly okay, for something so close to a vegetable. They're at least sweet. He gives you a few more pieces of jerky, too, before sheepishly showing you that the pouch is empty. 

“What's your name?” you ask. 

I AM KURLOZ MAKARA, PRINCE OF RAGE, SERVANT OF THE MIRTHFUL MOTHERFUCKING MESSIAHS.

“And by mirthful motherfucking messiahs, you mean me,” you say.

Makara gestures expansively, taking in the ugly, rainbow trees, the white rock, the small crescent of a moon hanging in the daylight sky. 

YOU ARE THE ANGEL OF DOUBLE DEATH. YOURS IS THE HAND THAT USHERED US INTO PARADISE. ALL THIS IS YOURS BY RIGHT. 

“I don't want it,” you say, petulant. “I don't want to be here.” 

His gaze is level and imperturbable. He shrugs. 

WHEN YOU ARE CHOSEN, THERE IS NO ARGUMENT AND NO ESCAPE. WE WERE ALL CHOSEN. BORN, KILLED AND BORN AGAIN BY YOUR HAND.

“THAT WASN'T ME,” you shout. “I didn't bring anyone here! I just destroyed everything and then somehow ended up here!”

YOU WOULD RATHER HAVE SHATTERED AND DIED WITH THE OLD UNIVERSE? SOMETIMES DOORS MUST BE CLOSED AND SOMETIMES DOORS MUST BE CARVED OPEN THROUGH THE ROTTING CORPSE OF THE PAST. I HAVE GRASP OF THIS MOTHERFUCKING KNOWLEDGE BECAUSE I TOO AM A DESTROYER.

He kneels, tall and straight-backed on the forest floor. You're terrible at reading facial expressions – you've never been around people long enough to learn. But you think there is some ghost of pain lingering around his bland smile. It makes you a little sick to look at. 

“Why the fuck are you even out here, and not down playing house with all those other assholes? Do they not like you or some shit?”

You can't imagine why anyone wouldn't like a creepy fucker like him. You decide you don't give a fuck whether he can hear you being mentally sarcastic about him. You didn't ask for him to fucking worship you or whatever.

He raises an eyebrow. 

OUR CONFLICT IS MAINLY IDEOLOGICAL.

And it's mainly over you. He doesn't say it, but the thought is there, lingering at the edge of his mind-voice with a touch of defiance and pride.

He's just like Dirk, you think. He'll never back down, never compromise. He'll knock down anything in his way with deadly efficiency, and what he knocks down will only get back up if it will be useful to him later.

You wonder why he let you get back up and what's actually in it for him. 

Besides the fucking baby he apparently had, shit. You'd almost forgotten all about that, sitting here feeling almost grateful. Fucking sickening. 

“I'm going to kill them all,” you say, as much to yourself as to him. “And that includes you.” 

You start to loose yourself in Time. As you go, he sends you one last thought.

SHOULD YOU BE ABLE TO MAKE BETTER USE OF ME ALIVE, MY LORD, LOOK FOR ME HERE.

~

You find a crossroads, where the path along the riverbank splits. A prefect place to lurk and wait for another victim.

You nearly jump out of your skin when you flash by the Timewitch again, her deep red eyes knowing and hungry on you. Before you can decide what the fuck to do about it, there is another you next to you in the Timestream.

You snarl at his douchey outfit. He grins at you, puts a hand on your chest and _shoves_.

You stumble into a present.

Someone blunders right into you, and you barely catch your balance without falling.

“What the fuck,” you growl. 

“Oh. This motherfucking figures,” the person says, voice nasty and snotty and choked sounding.

It's your son, looking spindly-limbed and slightly taller than you, though not as tall as he will be as an adult. His orange eyes are wet and bloodshot. He brushes by you and stomps off up the path, glaring at you like he wants you to drop dead on the spot. He's pretty fucking good at glaring and stomping. You wonder if he gets it from you.

Someone else takes you by the shoulder while you're distracted. You whirl, trying to jerk yourself out of their grasp. 

It's your fucking bitch sister. You wish suddenly and fiercely that you had a weapon. You should have planned this shit so much better. Future you is an interfering asshole.

She sighs at you like she's so superior. “Come on, then. I don't care which you this is, or whether you know what's going on. Your son needs you.” 

You make a grab for her throat. She dodges, dropping your shoulder and coming back holding one of your wrists quick as lightning. 

“That's not going to work on me.” She has the audacity to smile at you. “I've been training, obviously harder than you have. Come on, now.”

You reach for your Time shit, already gloating at the way her corpse will dissolve into loam.

Your son gets you first. Your anger, your killing intent drain out of you like blood from a severed artery. You are empty and echoing and stunned.

The look on his face is thunderous. He slams you with a fist made of all the hate he's stolen from you, and grinds you into the dirt. 

Calliope lets you fall, backing off wide-eyed.

“I hate you,” he snarls. “I _hate_ you, Dad!” 

“Good,” you choke. 

His face contorts and you fear him, actually fear him. Your own hate pours back into you mingled with his, cascading through you in a sickening, ungraspable torrent.

“Young you is an even bigger asshole than motherfucking older you. You never change. You're never around for anyone, or good for anything!” 

There's all kinds of sorrow and loneliness and hurt and ugly resentment mixed into the feedback loop, now. With your own anger stripped away, there's nothing for you to cling to but a half-hearted memory of what you should act like. You bare your teeth at him, defiant. 

“Kharon,” Calliope says, stepping up to him.

He tears his eyes off you. The punishing flow of feelings abates to a trickle, and his face collapses into a teary mess. He sniffles, loud and wet and disgusting.

“Mom is a motherfucking moron for worshiping you like he does,” he tells you, not looking at you. “You're just a person, and not a very good one. I never want to see you again!”

“I'm all right with that,” you mutter.

Now he looks at you, eyes wide and shocked as if he didn't just rape your brain with his teenaged histrionics. A final, cold splash of his hurt rushes over you and he takes off running into the woods.

Your sister strides over to you and slaps you full across the face. 

“I don't know why I thought you could help,” she says. 

She leaves you laying there, numb.

~

You brood by the crossroads, in a future distant enough to guarantee you will encounter no one you know.

The echo of Kharon's hurt still bounces around inside you. 

It's pissing you off, because it reminds you too much of yourself. And _that's_ pissing you off because you've never needed or wanted or had to deal with reflecting on yourself in any way shape or form. Ever. 

It sucks.

“Hello the Crossroads,” someone says. 

You glance up. Any kind of distraction from yourself would be fucking awesome right now. 

A young man in worn travel clothes stands there, black-green hair stringy around his white-painted face, hanging into his indigo eyes. He's looking at you with barely restrained excitement.

“Wow,” he says. “Wow! Merciful, wrathful messiahs, you're him!” 

The kid looks like he's about to start hyperventilating.

“What the shit,” you mutter. 

He falls to his knees, eyes roaming all over you. They seem to keep returning to your chest, where your symbol is half-discolored from the Timewitch's blood. He makes an odd, wiggling gesture before his chest and touches his forehead, muttering rhythmically.

“What the fuck are you doing?” you ask. 

“I- you- you're the Lord of Time!” he says. 

“Yeah. So?”

“I apologize if my behavior is disrespectful, my Lord!” he says quickly, bowing so low his forehead touches the ground. 

“Get the fuck up before I kill you,” you growl at him.

He pops to his feet lightly, peeking at you from under his lashes. You notice a shortsword strapped at his side. He's tall and broad but whipcord thin. Probably relies on his speed and reach, a hit and dodge fighter, like Dirk.

Dirk. You want to talk to Dirk. _Your_ Dirk, not some strange, elderly copy.

“My Lord, I- can I request-” 

Oh, right, this asshole.

“What's in it for me?” you ask, cutting off his stupid stutter.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” he mutters, digging through his bag. “Of course I brought an offering for you. Here.”

He hands you a paper packet full of little cakes, backing off as soon as you snatch it from his hand. Your stomach growls. You suddenly feel much more kindly disposed toward him, though he's pretty obviously a tool.

“Fucking ask your question, then,” you growl, your mouth packed full of sugary goodness.

“It- it's said that you will give those who encounter you a boon, a prediction, some bit of wisdom, my Lord. A command, even. I have dedicated my life to your service.” 

He looks like he's about to start bowing again. 

“Cut that shit out,” you tell him. “I'm trying to enjoy this delicious fucking confection, and you're ruining it with all that crap.”

He nods several times, sort of dancing on his toes. You wonder if he has some kind of major head injury in his past. His horns are weirdly textured, small and pointed like yours, but they're all a dull red, lacking their orange and yellow layers.

“What the fuck happened to your horns?” you ask. 

“They were filed down when I entered your service. I'm lucky that they're placed right. They look so much like yours do!” He touches them, a little proudly.

“You mutilated your horns to look like _me?”_ you ask. “That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Were you brain damaged before or after they did that to you?”

His mouth falls open in surprise. “Listen,” you tell him. “You want a command? Here's one. Tell those assholes that I'm just a person, and not a very good one.”

Your head hurts. Your stomach is in knots around the cakes. You want to talk to Dirk. 

You leave crazy cultist future kid staring dumbfounded at the place you just were.

~

You scroll backwards in time, watching, People go back and forth along this path a lot. They get younger and younger, turn into children, and disappear. Eventually, you start to recognize some of them, though they're too fucking old. Finally, you find Dirk at the right age. You watch as he and Jake rest by the river with mohawk-guy and another, short, red and nubby-horned dude. With a couple of careful stitches into the uninhabited past, you're able to track Dirk and Jake back to their house, a collection of wooden boxes and platforms built into the branches of a huge tree.

You land on a day when Dirk has just emerged alone into the sunrise. It is late autumn. The night air has a damp chill which is slow to dissipate. The hairs all over your arms raise. Fuck, you hate this body.

“Dirk,” you bark. 

His head swivels toward you and he stops short. 

“Sup?” he says. “Back again so soon?”

“What?” you ask, and you sound cranky and petulant as a child.

“Oh,” he says, looking you over again. “You were just here last week for the hatching. You were actually pretty chill about it, so it must have been future you.”

“Fuck you and fuck him.”

“Whatever,” Dirk says. “There's not much I can do about you stalking me through time, anyway, right? Other than try and help you sort your shit out, like a bro does for his bros. As long as you're not an asshole to Jake or my kid-”

“Kids,” you say. 

“Hey, no spoilers,” he says, holding up a hand. “Those are the rules, remember? Don't be an asshole and no spoilers. Might be kind of hard for you, but I know you can do it, man. I'll stop dropping references to future you as well. We'll just have to take each other as we are whenever you deign to drop in.”

You stare at him, really looking for a change. His stupid pointy glasses are firmly in place, shielding his eyes. His hair is not quite as gravity-defying as it looked on your screens, its perfect swoop now soft and messy. The morning light catches on the downward half-heart sweep of his horns around his face. 

“Cal,” he says. “You look like shit. When was the last time you slept?” 

You are so fucking tired, suddenly, though it's only been, what, twelve or so hours since your little nap with Makara? It seems longer.

“None of your fucking business, Strider.” 

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “So, what is my fucking business, then? Did you want something or are you just here to stare at me creepily like I'm your personal entertainment? Because I have to say, that shit gets real old, real fast.” 

“I-” Fuck, shit. You don't know what to say, or how to explain this. You're all muddled up inside, skull still ringing with your kid's bitch-fit accusations. “Uh.”

“We really need to work on your verbal skills.” Dirk says, “Come on. I'll let you hang out with me while I work on Hal's new body. And if you come up with whatever it was you wanted we'll sort it out then.”

He leads you up a path toward the village center, where the biggest buildings sit on a gentle hill. Crocker and Lalonde stand by an open door into the largest building. They stop their conversation to frown at you as you approach. Dirk waves at them, nodding. Lalonde wraps her arms around Crocker, leaning close enough that her lips brush the other bitch's ear as she whispers. 

“Dirk,” you say, “Those bitches. Are shamelessly cuddling right there in front of everyone.”

“Don't stare, dude, and for fuck's sake don't let them hear you calling them bitches. Yeah, of course they're cuddling. They're lovers. Please don't tell me this little visit is going to revolve around your cuddling fetish.”

“Fuck you!”

“Much better. Come on, the workshops are this way.”

He leads you across a wide yard, where a few people sit on blankets or in rough chairs, working on various small tasks. They stare at you as you pass. You resist the urge to sneer at them or run. Instead you stare hard at the back of Dirk's head, your shoulders knotting tighter and tighter.

You duck through a low doorway, into a cramped building lined in workbenches. Tools and bins of small parts are hung over every inch of the walls, meticulously organized. A very large, very blue man bends over one bench, his huge fingers delicate on a bundle of tiny rods and wires. An olive-green girl in a long coat sits on a stool, watching him work.

“How goes it?” Dirk asks him. 

“I have made some progress with the joint articulation. Your suggestions were helpful, though I still think a hydraulic system would be superior as a tendon-analogue.” 

“And what exactly do you propose we use for hydraulic fluid? Fish oil?”

The girl is suddenly standing next to you, a large, round, green thing cradled in her arms. “Hi Cal,” she says, “Congratulations again on being a daddy!”

You stare at her. She cocks her head at you and smiles, proffering the object in her arms. “This is me and Jade's egg, see? She's going to be the cutest, strongest, most purrfect baby ever! Not that yours isn't cute, because he really is! I'm just supurr excited!”

You blink, suddenly thinking of the look on Kharon's face as he ran from you.

“Who the fuck are you?” you ask.

“My name's Nepeta!” she announces. “Wow, is this the first time you've met me? I met you last week when you were here for the hatching. Oh, it was so adorable. I even cried a little. Then we took a bath together with Jade and Dirk!”

“I am _not_ adorable,” you mutter.

“Sure you are! You're pawfully shy. It's very adorable, even if you're kind of scary.”

“Nepeta,” the blue guy cuts in, “I do not approve of your being friendly with him before at least three or four gears.”

The girl sticks her tongue out at him. “If no one's friendly with him, how is he supposed to learn? Besides, you two are busy having that same stupid argument again!”

“Shit, you're right. Sorry, Cal,” Dirk says, patting you on the shoulder. “Come on, we have a feelings jam to get to, as soon as you work yourself up to it.” 

You let him sit you down on a stool near one of the benches. You kind of can't believe someone just called you adorable. The girl seems utterly unafraid of you. She waves at you merrily as they leave, their arguing voices retreating into the distance.

“Study that shit,” Dirk says, “Those two are apparently the ultimate model of pale romance, a perfect, platonic ideal of perfectly platonic affection. Or so I'm told.” 

“They are?” you ask, incredulous.

Dirk snorts, his lips turning up at one corner in amusement. He starts poking away at the components laid out on the bench. They form a roughly bipedal shape, though the details are incomprehensible to you.

“You remember my auto responder? Equius – that guy who was just in here – is helping me build a body for him. It's been a really long process, since our resources are pretty limited, and a lot of other projects have had to take precedence. Long story short, AR and Eq ended up sharing a body for a while, and then that version of AR was destroyed in the transfer to this universe. We've been playing with the idea of trying to download Eq's memories of that time so AR's backup copy can access them. It's hard to say if that's really a very good idea or not. Maybe better to let him start fresh. Or maybe it would be most ethically sound to power him up and ask him which he would prefer. I'm just reluctant to turn him on without an autonomous body for him to inhabit. Once he's on, I can't really turn him off again, you know?”

“Dirk,” you interrupt. “I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about and I don't really care.”

Dirk gives you a long, expressionless look.

“Rule one,” he says.

You roll your eyes.

Dirk bends back over the workbench, fiddling with the place where one mechanical leg joins to the body. His silence is stony. 

“My kid hates me,” you blurt. 

Dirk doesn't look up, but you can see his eyebrows lift, pale above his glasses. “I can only assume this is some future version of your kid, since he's only a few days old right now. Let me guess, you encountered him as a teenager and he pitched a total fit at you.” 

“How-” 

“Not that hard to infer,” Dirk says. “Given your complete refusal to deal with anyone in a sane, linear or passably polite fashion. I feel bad for everyone who's involved with you, including myself, frankly. But teenagers, especially, need reliable relationships, since their brains and bodies are such an unstable, rapidly-changing mess. When I was a teenager, you better believe I resented the shit out of Dave – my Bro Dave, not the Dave you might have met here – even though I also idolized him, and even though he died hundreds of years before my meteor splashed down from the Veil. It's not an entirely rational thing, dude.

“Anyway, if you want him to not hate you, you still have plenty of time to do something about it. Such as not be a total asshole to him every time you see him. I know the two rules are between us, but really you could stand to apply them to all your quadrants, kids, sister, and basically everyone else you come into contact with.”

“I don't have any quadrants, fucknuts,” you growl.

“Yes you do. In spite of your best efforts at being reprehensible, you at least have a moirail. And I don't know and hopefully never will know what exactly you and Makara get up to, but he had your goddamn baby. I'm pretending to myself that that was a mutual thing, since you won't talk about it.” 

“I. What? The fucking clown? I thought pale meant no – ugh – sexual relations.”

“Oh for fuck's sake,” Dirk says, finally looking up at you. “Kurloz is _not_ your moirail. _I_ am.” 

You splutter. You blush. Dirk looks at you over his shades with a tenderness that makes you want to be sick. He lifts your hand off the workbench and runs his thumb across your knuckles.

“Sorry,” he says softly, “Rule two, I know. But you'd keep me waiting forever if I didn't put the moves on you myself. There have been a couple of times before now when future you felt free to jump me for random hugs or a feelings jam, so it's your own fault.”

“Fuck you, Strider, I would _never,”_ you say, and your voice sounds so destroyed you just stop talking. His hand on yours is so gentle you think you might explode. You are definitely going to be sick and explode in a shower of vomit and hot shame. You somehow feel exponentially _worse_ when he abruptly stops touching you.

“By now I'm totally past expecting you to go linear for any reasonable amount of time, so go ahead and go think about it. Come back when you're ready.” He turns away from you and picks up a screwdriver. 

You can tell from his flinch that your scream escapes you before you're safely loose in time.

You burst in on him some random amount of weeks later, as he's bent again over the table full of parts.

“Why?!” you say, your accusing finger in his face. “Why the fuck would you be my moirail?”

His fist closes around your finger, and there's nothing tender about it at all. It's a warning.

“Because I'm both willing and uniquely suited for the task. You need a handsome Prince to destroy you before you destroy yourself? I'm the only man for the job. Don't worry, I'll build you back up again gentle as you please. I know you like it real tender. And don't say you don't need it. You're coming apart at the seams, dude. When was the last time you slept?”

“I _hate_ you.”

“Sorry, Cal. I promised Jake I wouldn't go black for you.”

He actually smiles at you, a tiny, fond quirk of his lips. You can feel your own mouth wobbling traitorously. He drops your hand and hauls you into a _hug_. 

“Shh-shh,” he soothes, his fingers brushing the short hairs at the nape of your neck. You feel like your strings have all been cut, every tendon snapped, every organ pierced with a blade of horror and wanting. You have no idea what to do with your arms. Without your direction, they find their way to his sides and twist into his shirt. 

“We got this,” he says, and you can feel his lips moving against your temple, his head tipped to keep his horn clear of your face. You hate that he's taller than you and the way he smells faintly of engine grease. “I got you. You're going to be okay. We're going to make that happen.”

“Hate you,” you tell him again, because it's true, damn it. 

“Shhhh.”

He doesn't let you go for a long time. After a while you remember to try and fight him, to try and get free. He doesn't let you go until you give up and go limp in his hold. 

You abscond the second he stops touching you.


	3. Misunderstanding

Dirk is pale for you. Dirk is _pale_ for you.

Dirk fucking shooshed you and papped you and hugged you while doing so. Fuck, it was like some kind of depraved scene from your sister's fucking unspeakable fanfiction.

Dirk is pale for you and he _means_ it.

You indulge in some very necessary snarling, stomping, incoherent swearing and general fit-pitching. You work yourself up until you're a foaming-at-the-mouth mess, unable to sleep, nauseous with hunger and rage. You climb the bluff yet again and look down on this fucking cage of a valley, wishing it full of fire and destruction with all your considerable will.

You decide it's time for another nice murder and fling yourself recklessly across Time. You have no plan. You're simply going to blast the first person you see into dust, no matter whose kid or quadrant or whatever the fuck they are.

You are fiercely, fiercely glad when the first person you see is your sister.

“Caliborn,” she calls, hurrying up like she's been waiting for you to appear. “I'm glad you're here.”

You crack a smile. She's going to look beautiful as a corpse. Again.

“Uh oh,” she says.

She dodges when you grab for her, then dodges again. Fuck, she is fast. You summon all your Time shit into your hands, ready to annihilate her if you land the slightest touch. 

“Will you cut that out?” she huffs, annoyed. “There's something important you- Hey!” 

She dodges you again and again like it's no effort at all, leading you back through the trees. You accidentally land a blow on one, and it crumbles into a pile of powdery rot. Calliope's eyes widen.

“Stop fucking around and let me kill you!” you shout.

“Yeah, right. Why do you always have to be so horrible? I haven't done anything but try to help you since we got here.”

“You're weak. You're _weak_. I'm the _Lord of Time_. Goddamn it, stop dodging!”

“Can I help it that you telegraph all your moves so obviously?” she says, skipping around maddeningly. “I am as powerful a Player as you, you know. I will _always_ know your exact location anywhere on this planet. And I know things about this place you could never imagine, limited as I know you are.” 

“And have you told any of your so-called friends these fancy secrets? You are a liar and a manipulative bitch, just like you've always been. Just like I am.”

“I'm nothing like you!” She crashes through a bush, nearly tripping over it as she jumps out of your way. Ooh, that was close. She always starts to slip up when you get her mad.

“Oh, but you are,” you hiss at her. “I am the darkness staining all your sweet, candy-coated nothingness. And you can't even pretend like it has nothing to do with you, now that you have your own body and your own brain all to yourself. Hypocrite!”

She grins as she evades you yet again, teasing and narrow-eyed with anger. “No one's a bigger hypocrite than you! Pretending to be so tough, so untouchable, when I know you're just sad and lonely and dying for someone to cuddle. Maybe someone would want to, if there were anything to you besides hate!”

You stop short. She stops too, not even looking winded, her green lips curled in a sneer.

“Oh, you fucking bitch. That's just wrong. You've gone too fucking far this time.”

You skip back in time, take a few steps so you're right where she was standing, then skip forward again.

Even that doesn't work. She's there and then she's not, leaping away from a spot just to the left of where you could swear she was. 

“Space and Time are fairly evenly matched, don't you think?” she says. “Are you ready to give up yet?”

You hate her. You _hate_ her. 

_”Never.”_

“Cal,” she says, dodging you neatly again and again. “You're not going to touch me. You're too upset. You always make mistakes when you get upset.”

“Fuck you,” you snarl. You try another stitch back and forth in time, and again she is not where you thought she was.

“You have _no reason_ to be this upset,” she tells you. “You're just making yourself and everyone else unhappy.”

“Yes I do!” 

“Oh?” she says. She darts in, flicks you on the forehead with a leafy twig she's wielding like a wand, then twists away too quick to grasp. “Well, please do explain your reasons to me. I'm all ears.”

“You are so awful. So awful!” You try stitching further back in Time, then closer. It doesn't work. You try lurking outside Time, watching her fight you, waiting to pop out at her the second she stumbles close. She never comes near enough. 

Fuck. Fuck. You're getting clumsier and clumsier, and your brain is starting to fog. Your lungs are starting to cramp in your chest. Your body can't take this. It is weak, even with your rage driving it as hard as it can go. You are so weak here you can't even kill your sister.

You abscond into the past. You can rest, find some food, then move right back to that moment and finish her off. You're the Lord of Time. You can do things like that. You haven't lost. You haven't.

~

Somehow, in the course of your fight, you've ended up close to your starting point. You stumble to that familiar clearing, lean against a familiar tree. Slowly, slowly, your breathing evens and your heart settles behind your ribs. Your brain races with your sister's barbs, her humiliating branch-wand pap, the sting of her slap across your face. Your stomach gnaws at itself.

You are fucking sick of feeling so hungry and tired all the time. Suddenly, all you want is to be comfortable. You want to lay down on a real Sarswapagus and get some real fucking sleep. You wouldn't even have to worry about what that hideous, cruel bitch was getting up to in your body. 

Urgh.

You scroll through days and weeks until you find Makara, careful to make sure his kid isn't with him. He is facing away from you when you appear, sitting cross-legged, still as some inanimate thing.

It's not like you want help. You're not asking for anything from anyone. You're taking what was freely offered you. 

“Is it true you'll do anything I tell you?” you ask. 

He doesn't jump, or flinch, or even twitch. The way his head swivels toward you does nothing to dispel that illusion that he is a manikin, a puppet. Shit, you'd forgotten how fucking creepy he is. His mind-voice is like a trickle of ice water in your brain.

I AM YOURS TO DO WITH WHAT YOU WILL, MY LORD.

You narrow your eyes. “Anything?”

He nods, turning and rearranging himself on his knees before you. He is still too goddamn tall, even keeling, his horns twisting before your face. You look down at him, supplicant and waiting. You realize you have _no idea_ what you want to do with him. The only thing that comes to mind is to kill him. But once he was gone you'd be alone with yourself and still hungry.

Wordlessly, he produces a pouch of water, a little net bag of fruit and bread. He hands them to you. You take them.

At least the fruit is sweet. The bread is tasteless but filling, like really bad cake. You hand half the loaf back to him when you can't stand to eat any more. 

THANK YOU, MY LORD.

“Why the fuck are you thanking me? It's your fucking food.” 

He shrugs, smiling his meaningless smile. You finish all the thin-skinned, sweet little fruits down to their pips and lick your fingers clean. 

You stare at him. He stares back at you. 

He shifts closer, takes your hand and presses your knuckles to his forehead. His brows draw together in an expression you can't interpret, but that makes your heart squeeze. The tree is the only thing holding you up, you're pretty sure.

“Let me go,” you say. 

He drops your hand, slowly. He looks at you with those infuriatingly calm, nearly blank indigo eyes of his. It's really kind of awesome, just how creepy he is. His face is starkly angular, his hair a soft black cloud. His skin is like sticky sweet caramel beneath its purple sheen and he has two strange, faint lines of pinprick scars bracketing his narrow lips.

You are going to make yourself fucking sick with this train of thought. You are so fucking frustrated you can barely keep your shit together here. You're at the point where you actually _want_ someone to shut off the screaming pressure in your head, if only so you can think without your brain going off on these traumatic tangents about blood and insults and other people's skin. Maybe you could even get some fucking _sleep_.

“Do the Rage thing, like you did that time when Kharon hugged me,” you order.

Makara lifts an eyebrow at you. 

I DO NOT KNOW ANYONE BY THAT NAME, MY LORD. 

Fuck, right. You made sure this time was too early for any of that.

“Well, fuck. I-” Fuck, this is fucking hard to admit. “I just need to. Clear my fucking head for a while. To, you know, plot the death of this planet running on pure, cold logic or some crap. Do I need to make myself any fucking clearer?”

His face has smoothed again, though his mental voice is tinged with amusement.

I UNDERSTAND, MY LORD. YOU WISH TO MEDITATE. YOU WISH ME TO ASSIST.

You nod. 

This time, the mental hand that closes around your Rage is like the most tender touch you've ever received, the most tender touch you could possibly imagine. It is infinitely more tender than Dirk's rough hug that was half a trap. You can feel your knee-jerk disgust at this effrontery distantly, the gentled strength of his mind holding it separate from your core. Alongside the disgust, he holds your thread of deep enjoyment, your desire for kindness and intimacy and your fear of it as well. You examine these feelings calmly. 

These are parts of you that exist. It is very strange, this lack of judgment for any of them.

His hands support you gently as you sag to your knees. You feel like you should be shaking, freaking out. In that distant, hostage part of your mind you are doing these things. Your regard of them is just this side of clinical.

He lays you out on your back, touching you as little as possible, then sits watchful at your side, guarding you. The sky is washed in color as the sun begins to set. You feel empty, ringing, clear as air or water or the void of space. 

Some part of you despairs that there really is nothing left of you, under all the hate. Even that part is like a specimen under glass, a curiosity, only connected to you by the barest thread. 

After a time, you sleep.

You begin to dream, again, of the Timewitch. The rock slipping. Her blood lashing from her severed torso like the Miles, scouring a hole clean through you.

Even here, in the dream, Makara's gentle grip surrounds you. Without the fear, the blood-Miles are a cypher and the hole in your chest fails to wake you. 

He helps you to sink deeper, seeking rest.

You are aware at one point of being moved, lifted, carried against something wonderfully soft. There is a smell of smoke. Makara's mind lies on you like the lid of your Sarswapagus, dark, safe and enclosing. You don't bother opening your eyes, or maybe can't. 

Your dreams slide through your mind one after another, their claws unable to find purchase. 

Someone speaks near you, voice raising in a one sided argument. It is too much effort to understand.

You become aware that you are floating. You are naked and wrapped in soft cloth, arms crossed on your stomach like a funereal statue. All of your self is littered in pieces across the floor of your mind, but that doesn't seem important right now.

It feels peaceful to drift, cocooned from within and without.

“Why we need care what they think?” the voice asks, closer by your head. Someone's finger traces a line across your cheekbone all the way to the tip of your ear. 

You shiver. You realize again that you are naked and wrapped in cloth, your arms bound across your stomach, and someone is touching your face.

A weight lifts off you. A different weight settles against you, swinging you dizzily. 

Your arms peel free of the cloth more easily than your eyes peel open. You flail into the soft presence at your side with elbows and pushing palms.

“Ah! You feisty when you wake up. That nice, yes?”

It's the Timewitch. It's the Timewitch, leaning over you as you mash one of your hands into her generous cleavage, trying to hold her at arm's length. You freeze. Your eyes dart back and forth from her face to her tits. Tits that you're touching, fuck.

She laughs. “It okay. I like you touch.” 

She takes your hand, starts to slide your fingers into the neck of her shirt.

“I'm going to kill you,” you squeak.

SISTER.

She pouts, stepping back. You swing back and forth, suddenly, and you clutch at the edges of the thing you're laying on. It is, you see, a heavy piece of fabric strung between two trees. A hammock. 

The Timewitch rakes you with half-lidded eyes. You are a passenger in your own mind, watching it boil with guilt and horror like it belongs to someone else entirely.

Makara steadies you, appearing silently at your other side. When his mind closes around yours, it's such a relief you feel like crying. You wouldn't even be ashamed to cry, if he wouldn't let you be. You curl toward him a little, as if that might help you clutch his mind close. 

BE CALM, MY LORD. WE WILL LET NO HARM COME TO YOU.

“I'm really going to kill her,” you mumble.

What the fuck. What the fuck. Whose thoughts are these, even? Could they possibly be yours? They are nothing like you remember yourself being. 

Why isn't he forcing away these last, existential dregs of your fear?

He places your clothes on your chest. They are clean and dry and neatly folded. The stains are fainter than they were, but still clearly visible. You wonder if everyone who sees you knows them for what they are.

“I want to be by myself,” you croak. Your voice sounds so weak, like you don't mean that at all. Only part of you means it, but it's the part that's not a shivering, pathetic wreck right now.

Makara steps back, his mouth turning down at the corners.

The Timewitch snorts. 

“You need get self together,” she tells you. “Be strong. No disappoint.”

“What the fuck do you want from me?” you ask.

She grins at you again. Her eyes crinkle at the corners in a way that makes her look angry. 

“You take this,” she tells you. She pulls her shoulder satchel off and plunks it on top of your clothes.

You don't know what to do. You don't know what to _do._

They watch you as you fade yourself away into Time.

~

You're not sure when you are.

You stumble down the path toward the village for some reason, not sure why you'd want to, or whether it's a good idea.

Someone finds you, but for once it's someone you don't know or hate personally, yet. He is short and burly, horns even smaller than yours, his messy hair sheened blood-red. He scowls at you with both hands planted on his hips, looking you up and down. 

“You look like you could use a fucking drink,” he says. 

“Is that what you need when you don't know what the fuck is, like,” you wave your hand, “Something?”

He snorts. “That is exactly when you fucking need a fucking drink. Much as I hate to waste good booze on an assblister like you. Come on.”

It's the first time you've been inside that big building. The high-ceilinged, table-filled room is lit with a sparing pair of lamps, flames burning on their wicks.

Perhaps inevitably, Dirk is there, slouched alone on one of the long wooden benches, a wooden cup and pitcher at his elbow.

“What the fuck, Strider,” the red dude says. “Did your wifebro kick your worthless ass out again?”

“Vantas,” Dirk mumbles. He's not wearing his glasses. “That's- Cal?”

He wobbles a little, squinting at you. 

“Cal,” he says, drawing out the L irritatingly, “I am so glad you're here. Like, really fucking glad, dude. Come drink with me.” 

“Maybe you should switch to water,” Vantas says, taking a pair of cups from a stack on the sideboard. He grabs your elbow and shoves you onto the bench next to Dirk, then plops himself down across from you both. 

He tosses a cup in front of you and pours something frothy into it from the pitcher. It smells sour.

“What the fuck is this?” you ask.

“Beer, dude. Magical, wonderful beer.”

“Just shut your reprehensible windflap and drink it,” Vantas says, pouring for himself.

You do, trying to ignore the way Dirk is leaning into your shoulder.

“This is fucking awful,” you say, slamming your cup back down on the table. “Like fucking rotten liquid bread.”

“It'll grow on you,” Vantas says, pouring you more.

“Make it taste like cake and maybe I'll let it.”

Your stomach doesn't seem sure what the fuck to do with this 'beer.' You feel a bit warm, and also fucking irritated by the way Dirk's giggling in your ear. It's much better than the numb, blasted out crater your feelings just were.

“Dirk,” you say. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“I'm drunk,” he says. “Blitzed. Pissed. Sauced. Ferschnookered. Sloppy as hell. I am a maudlin fucking mess. C'mere, Cal.”

The next thing you know you have a lapful of sweaty, off-balance Strider, his horn pressed tight against your shoulder as he buries his face in your neck.

“Oh my god,” Vantas grumbles. Secretly, you agree. You did not sign up for this shit. You don't have the first clue how to deal with this shit. You are so nervous you think you might hurl.

“Strider, you are so fucking incompetent sometimes I have no idea how you manage to ride herd on both Englishes and that whole pack of nightmarish little hooligans you spawned. You really think Jake would take this well, if he walked in right now?”

“Jakey wouldn't give a shit. We're bros,” Dirk warbles. You loathe his hot breath against your skin. “He's my best, best bro and you're my worst best bro, Cal. We got this sorted, least until you abscond again and come back trying to punch me in the face for some shit I said five years from now. He's always my Jakey. When he's not kicking me out for being a 'right miserable manipulative bastard.'” His imitation of Jake's accent is slightly less slurred than his weird, clipped drawl. He clumsily runs his hand up your shoulder and across your fuzz of hair.

“Oh, shit, how am I gonna keep him?” Dirk mumbles.

“How the fuck would you not keep him?” you ask, “Who the fuck on this miserable fucking planet would he possibly replace _you_ with?” 

You are genuinely asking. You have no idea. Dirk laughs a shaky little laugh, petting you. Vantas raises his eyebrows like you've just impressed the fuck out of him. 

“You, you don't know,” Dirk says, taking one of your hands and examining it. “You're so fucking pure and naïve under all that murder. You don't know what I'm like. Took me so serious when I said I was your moirail. Shit. Made that come true my own self, didn't I?”

“You. WHAT?!” Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Your chest fucking hearts. You think you're having some kind of weird palpitations.

“Strider. You putrescent pustule on the seedflap of the universe. I hereby take back every single good thing I have ever said about you. Fucking hell, I also take back every neutral thing I've ever said about you. You are categorically horrible and manipulative and fucking unforgivable in every way. You utter fuck up, how could you say that to him? _Look at him!”_

Vantas is practically foaming at the mouth in defense of you, you realize. Dirk peels his face off your shoulder and looks at you. He crumples like a tragic fifty car pileup with hundreds of deaths. 

“Shhhh,” he says, leaning his forehead against yours, “Cal, no. Don't. Don't listen to me when I'm like this. You can't leave me too.” 

“No one is actually leaving you, you overdramatic ass!” Vantas says. He knocks back the rest of his beer. “Even though you fucking deserve it. Fuck, I'm out of here. Your drunken pale makeouts are the most disturbing possible makeouts, and that is coming from someone who has walked in on the Insufferables in full coitus.”

Dirk giggles and waggles his eyebrows ridiculously.

“ACCIDENTALLY!” Vantas yells, and slams out the door. 

You stand, dumping Strider's pathetic booze-reeking ass on the floor. 

“I'm leaving,” you announce. “This is bullshit. I fucking hate drunk you even more than I fucking hate normal you.” 

Dirk looks up at you woozily from the floor. 

“I deserve that,” he admits. “'S why you're a good 'rail, man. If I didn't want you pale, I wouldn't still be with you after so many goddamn sweeps of your schizo time shenanigans. 'S is too far for a joke, even for me.” 

“Bullshit,” you repeat. You flip him off for good measure and rewind until the room is empty.

~

There's only one way to undo this entire indignity, you decide. And that is to stop Dirk from becoming your moirail in the first place. You march out into the woods, fuming, and throw yourself down in a grassy little meadow, well out of sight of any of the village's buildings or paths.

Something, possibly the beer, is making it hard for you to navigate the Timestream. You give the fuck up at some random point near the beginning of the planet's occupation. You rip open the satchel the Timewitch gave you, hoping for some kind of weapon. Instead, there is a generous packet of dried fruit and salted fish, and a tablet computer.

\-- undyingUmbrage [uu] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

uu: DIRK.  
uu: I HAVE A PRESENT FOR YOU.  
uu: ALTHOUGH. AFTER THE LAST TIME I GAVE YOU A PRESENT.  
uu: I DON'T KNOW WHY I BOTHERED.  
uu: YOU UNGRATEFUL SACK OF SHIT.  
TT: Are you fucking serious.  
TT: Rolal, this is not fucking funny. Good impression, very accurate, but not fucking funny.  
uu: WHO THE FUCK IS ROLAL?  
uu: NEED I REMIND YOU. THAT IT WAS YOU WHO INITIATED.  
uu: THIS FUCKING TRAVESTY OF A SO-CALLED PALE FUCKING ROMANCE.  
uu: DIRK. ARE YOU CHEATING ON ME. WITH THIS ROLAL.  
TT: Sinking past not fucking funny and settling gently on the silty abyssal plain of incredibly poor taste. Are you in on this, Captor?  
uu: TAKE YOUR GODDAMN PRESENT. AND SHUT THE FUCK UP WITH YOUR DUMB SUSPICIONS.  
uu: THEY ARE MEANINGLESS. 

\-- undyingUmbrage [uu] wants to send timaeusTestified [TT] file 'dirkthisisyou.jpg' --

TT: ...  
TT: Okay, you've convinced me. Not even Terezi draws as poorly as you do.  
TT: So, I guess you're alive then?  
uu: NO. I AM WRITING YOU THIS. FROM THE FURTHEST FUCKING RING.  
uu: WHERE I AM EVEN NOW DINING ON THE STILL-WRITHING REMAINS OF THE NOBLE CIRCLE.  
uu: THAT WAS HUMAN SARCASM. IN CASE YOU ARE TOO STUPID TO TELL.  
uu: WHEN I AM EMPLOYING MY CONSIDERABLE INTELLIGENCE. FOR IRONIC PURPOSES.  
TT: Okay. Still alive. And I assume you must have entered this universe at the same time we all did.  
TT: So. What have you been up to in the past few seasons?  
uu: HAA. HAA. HAA.  
uu: YOUR TEMPORALLY FIXED FRAME OF REFERENCE. IS AMUSINGLY LIMITED.  
uu: FOR SUCH A BIG SHOT MOUTH RUNNING GUY.  
uu: AND FOR YOUR INFORMATION. WHAT I HAVE BEEN UP TO.  
uu: IS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS.  
TT: Well, if we're as pale as you were just claiming, it probably is my business. Just saying.  
TT: Not that I necessarily buy that, mind. I just expect more from you in terms of sticking to the precepts of your little ruses.  
uu: YOU DON'T BELIEVE  
uu: FUCK. FUCK.  
uu: THIS IS OUR FIRST CONVERSATION FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE. ISN'T IT.  
TT: Yup.  
uu: *FUUUUUUUCK*  
TT: Hey, man, it's like I've told you before. If you want people to know what the fuck you're talking about, you have to troll them linearly.  
uu: NO. SHUT UP STRIDER.  
uu: I CAN STILL TURN THIS MASSIVE COCKUP TO MY OWN PURPOSES.  
uu: I WILL SIMPLY.  
uu: DISGUST YOU.  
uu: UNTIL ANY HYPOTHETICAL FUTURE RELATIONSHIP.  
uu: WE MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE.  
uu: IS A SHAMBLES OF HORROR AND DISMAY.  
TT: Good luck with that, bro.  
uu: WELL. LET'S SEE. HOW YOU FEEL. ABOUT THIS.

\-- undyingUmbrage [uu] wants to send timaeusTestified [TT] file 'dirkthisisus.jpg' --

TT: Wow.  
uu: YES. YOU ARE FILLED WITH DISGUST. AT WHAT FILTH MY HANDS HAVE WROUGHT.  
uu: SO. NAAAAASTY.  
TT: I have to say, your drawing has really improved. Like, I can pretty much tell that those are supposed to be some kind of humanoid figures.  
TT: Good job with that, I guess.  
uu:YES. YOUR SWEET DISMAY. SHINES THROUGH YOUR STUPIDLY NONCHALANT WORDS.  
uu: I AM GETTING TO YOU.  
TT: Sure, dude. Your weird pale perving is always disturbing as fuck. Or should I take this as an outright pale solicitation?  
uu: WHOA. WHOA. SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE STRIDER.  
uu: IN NO WAY IS THIS A SOLICITATION OF ANY KIND.  
uu: EXCEPT FOR A SOLICITATION FOR YOU TO GO FUCK YOURSELF.  
uu: WHILE I WATCH.  
TT: You really haven't changed much, have you?  
uu: YOU BLEED OUT SL  
uu: FUCK YOU STRIDER. YOU NEVER LET ME FINISH.  
uu: THAT'S IT. THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER.  
TT: No, wait.

\-- undyingUmbrage [uu] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

 

You pound the tablet against the forest floor a few times in an ecstasy of frustration. Fuck, that was a complete train wreck. Now you're the one that initiated this whole terrible clusterfuck of mobius reacharound pale solicitations. 

You gulp a few deep breaths, wracking your brain to try and come up with some way to fix this shit.

Fine. You decide that slightly-less-past Dirk might be more susceptible. You wind yourself through time, watching the leaves on the trees tremble and the merciless sun flash across the sky. You park yourself just over half a solar sweep from your last conversation, in a time where the air is cool and the ocean breeze blustery. 

\-- undyingUmbrage [uu] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

uu: DIRK.  
uu: WE ARE GOING TO PLAY A GAME.  
TT: Oh, hey. You're back, huh?  
uu: WHAT IS MORE TERRIBLE THAN HOLDING YOUR HAND?  
TT: Well, conversations with you tend to rank pretty high up there on the terribleness scale.  
uu: FUCK YOU. I AM A SCINTILLATING CONVERSATIONALIST.  
uu: AND NO. HOLDING HANDS WITH YOU IS THE MOST LOATHSOME POSSIBLE CIRCUMSTANCE IMAGINABLE. YOU LOSE THE GAME.  
TT: Dare I say that this was your shittiest twist yet?  
TT: Because dude. Seriously.  
uu: OH. YES. YOUR SUFFERING IS SWEET AS CANDY.  
uu: THE KIND OF CANDY. WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS. ON THIS HORRIBLE PUSTULE ON THE UNIVERSE'S ASS.  
uu: WHICH YOU SOMEHOW GOT ME FUCKING TRAPPED ON.  
uu: FUCK OFF AND DIE FOREVER.

\-- undyingUmbrage [uu] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering undyingUmbrage [uu] --

TT: Hey, man, don't run off yet.  
TT: I've been waiting around to talk to you again.  
uu: WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT THAT.  
TT: You know, I'm asking myself the same thing right now. 

“Hey,” someone says behind you, “Sup.”

It's Dirk, standing there with his stupid glasses and his stupid hair and his stupid expressionlessness.

“It occurred to me that if I were going to give you a tablet, I'd make sure to load a tracking app on it,” he says. “But just in case you stole it or something, I had Captor load one on every tablet we have.”

You shriek with rage and throw the tablet at his head, shoving yourself sideways into Time the second it leaves your hand. You watch in Timey fast-motion as he catches the tablet and flashsteps into the space you were just occupying, coincidentally overlapping you in a way that feels weird as fuck. And then, he just stands there. 

And stands there. And stands there. 

You're not able to pop back into the present until he falls over, out of your way. Your Timesense informs you that he stood there, arms crossed and feet braced wide apart, for _thirty five hours._

Fucking hell. He's completely insane, you realize. A hard fucking dude, to be sure, but nuts. Bananas. Any of the various other foodstuffs humans use in their nonsensical slang to describe crazy people.

You stare numbly at his prone form. His eyes have dark circles, visible under his shades, which have become dislodged in his faint. He smells like gross alien body odor. 

You crouch by his head, reaching down to touch his glasses. 

His eyes shoot open and he grabs your wrist in a crushing grip. 

“There you are,” he says. And then he blatantly inspects your bare forearm, turning your wrist over to see both sides. You try to jerk away from his grasp, but you are unable to break his hold. 

“Yeah, holding your hand is pretty much as unpleasant as advertised,” he says. “But I'm guessing, since you haven't flashed away again, that as long as I'm touching you, you can't leave this timeframe.” 

“Not without bringing you _with_ me,” you growl. Fuck, why did you tell him that?

“Ah ha.”

“What the fuck do you _want?”_ you ask him.

“That's exactly the question I was going to ask you. I was almost a little proud when you messaged me that first time. That whole mindfuck was way higher caliber than I've seen out of you before. Thought getting to be your own, whole person must have been good for you. But then I got couple of visits from various yous, and things started to get fucking weird in a hurry. So, an explanation might be nice.”

“There is no explanation. The entire thing is a self-fulfilling time-loop clusterfuck. I'm trying like fuck to disrupt it all before future me and future you end up braiding each others' hair in a fucking pile. Or something equally disturbing.”

“Give me one reason I'd ever want to be pale with you,” Dirk demands. His orange eyes are intense on yours, and he's yanking you down closer and closer by his hold on your wrist. His breath is stale.

“Maybe because you're fucking crazy enough to stand outside for a thirty five fucking hours without moving, just to prove a fucking point to some asshole whose trolled you a few times,” you snarl. “Which, by the way, you wouldn't have had to even do if you hadn't been _standing right on top of me_ the whole fucking time! Did you even tell your fucking wifebro where you were, dumbfuck?”

His eyebrows quirk and he relaxes somewhat, though his hold on your wrist doesn't slacken at all.

“Yeah, Jake knew where I was,” he says, sounding as tired as he should be suddenly. “He also knows better than to try and talk me out of any of my craziest dumbfuck schemes.”

“You need a goddamn keeper worse than I do,” you growl.

“Well, shit. I don't believe for a second that you would've come back here if I hadn't just pulled that stunt. So, what exactly are you planning to do now?”

“I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!” you yell.

“Hey,” Dirk says, “Indoor voices, dude.”

“We're not indoors, fucknuts!”

You try again to tear away from his hold, and fail.

“It's not exactly easy to go from being a hero, or a villain, to nobody in particular,” Dirk says quietly. “From what your sister's told me, I think you must be having the hardest time of anybody. Plus, you're all by yourself. How have you even been eating?”

“I'm not nobody in particular. For your information people in the future worship me like a _god.”_

“Right. How far in the future are we talking here?” 

“Seven hundred and fifty eight sweeps.” 

Dirk's eyebrow lifts. Fuck, he is fucking loathsome. 

“I'm the Lord of _fucking_ TIME,” you shout at him. 

“Are you?”

“AAAAUGH! I HATE YOU. LET ME FUCKING GO STRIDER.”

“No. Not until you tell me something.”

_“What?”_

“What's your name?”

You sputter. “Future you _knows_ my name.”

“Yeah, because you tell it to me right now.”

“I can't just go around telling people my name. It's against the rules!” 

“Yeah, right. Like I'm going to believe you give two shits about some arbitrary rules you made up for yourself. Breaking the spirit of the rules without breaking the letter is the name of your game, isn't it? Just think of what a shitty twist it would be to finally reveal your name to me.”

“That is not anything like a twist. And it is definitely not a fucking red herring. Fuck you, I'm not telling.” 

“You're such a kid. Fine. I'll sit here holding your hand as long as I need to. Or maybe I should just let you abscond again and go ask your sister. She discarded all your dumb rules a while ago, I'm sure she'd be happy to tell me.”

“You _wouldn't.”_

“You think not?”

You stare each other down. His face is completely still, like a doll's face. If it weren't for his bloodshot, drooping eyes, you'd think he was some kind of automaton. 

“Caliborn,” you say. You have to drag it up your throat with all your strength. 

“Caliborn,” he repeats, and it makes a squirt of some hot and embarrassing emotion burst in your chest. “Mind if I call you Cal?”

“Like I can stop you,” you grumble.

“Dude. Are you smiling?” 

“No! Shut your fucking face and let me fucking go! You promised!”

“Hey. Look at me.” 

You respond to his gentle command almost involuntarily. He's smiling too, just a little, tiny bit.

He lets go. 

You fall over backwards from your crouch, putting space in between you. He sits up, scrubbing at his face, getting a streak of dirt on his forehead. After a moment he holds up his fist.

“What the fuck are you doing?” you ask.

“It's called a fist bump, dude. You need directions? A hand-written, embossed invitation? Maybe a nice plush landing strip with some big light up arrows?”

“Oh my god, how does anyone put up with you ever?” you say. You give him a fist bump to shut him the fuck up already. 

“See, that wasn't so bad,” Dirk says. “Now. I feel like it's my moral obligation – and stop me if you need any of this terminology explained in detail - to tell you that Vantas and those guys are going to try and declare me your official moirail for peacekeeping purposes as soon as I tell them about this little incident. And I do need to tell them about this shit, if only to explain why I've been gone without notice for like a day and a half. Anyway, I plan to tell them no deal. If you and I are destined for some kind of magical time-hopping best-broship, we're going to have to earn it. This troll disease called friendship isn't actually a disease. You can't just catch it by hanging around someone enough. It's hard fucking work, just like any kind of real relationship with anyone is.” 

“Is this the part where we make up the rules?” you ask, weary already.

“I think we really only need one rule. Don't be an asshole. Might be hard for you, and frankly it can be kind of hard for me too, sometimes. That's why it needs to be a rule, I guess.”

“Yeah, I fucking know how hard it is for you, considering you're a giant sack of assholes with fucking stupid hair.”

“See, that right there is a perfect illustration of why we need rule number one. What did I do to set you off, anyway?” 

You feel your face burn. “Drunk future you said you were messing with me when you said you were my moirail,” you mutter.

Dirk's eyebrows shoot up. “That hurt your feelings, didn't it? So you decided the best thing to do was try to preemptively make me hate you. Sorry to tell you this, dude, but it kind of backfired. You seem a lot more tolerable than you used to be.”

“Shut _up,”_ you moan. Could this get any more embarrassing?

“Nope. Anyway, there's nothing I can do about your problem with future me. Maybe you should just go find him and tell him he broke rule number one. Rules do go both ways, you know.” 

That... seems so obvious you're not sure why it never occurred to you before. 

“Strider,” you say. “I guess you can be pretty okay. When you're not fucking drunk, anyway.”

Dirk sighs. “Well, if I ever meet drunk future me, I'll just have to punch that guy in the face for being such a huge douche.” 

“That could be arranged.” Oh, fuck, it would be _hilarious_.

“No thanks, dude. I think I'd rather not know what future me gets up to. Tempting as it is to be able to strife the only person on the planet who can keep up with me. Actually, maybe that should be a rule. No spoilers. And no time traveling me without permission. Stop pouting. You're like a little kid, I swear.”

“So?” you growl, “You like kids. You have enough of them.” 

“Oh, no. Don't even tell me. Don't want to know. Rule two.”

“No spoilers, I know!”

You look at each other for another moment. He really looks awful, and he's trembling a little even with his iron control. 

“You need to go the fuck home and go to sleep,” you tell him. 

“Or I guess I could just pass out right here or something,” Dirk says. “Not sure I could make it all the way home in my condition, honestly.”

You lever yourself to your feet, grab him by the arm and haul him upright. He leans against you heavily. You mutter fuck fuck fuck under your breath as you half-carry him through the woods, one fuck for every stomp of your feet.

Jake comes hurrying out of the treehouse when he spots the two of you on the path. He's got a big orange egg tied onto him with a length of striped cloth.

“Dirk!” he says, “Unhand him, rapscallion!”

You shove Dirk so he stumbles into Jake, nearly bowling them both over.

“Whoa, careful dude. That's my kid,” Dirk slurs. He pets the egg a little, then pets Jake's face, snuggling against him in a shameful display of emotional closeness. Jake's green eyes are fixed on you, waiting for you to make a move. His hand hovers over the pistol holstered on his thigh.

You miss your own gun. It was so shooty and awesome and solved so many of your problems. 

“If I were going to murder him, I would've done it out in the woods,” you tell him. “You prancing antiquated imbecile.”

You savor the look of complete confusion on Jake's face as you step sideways out of Time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the lack of pesterlog formatting. Maybe will go in and try to make it work later.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting!


	4. History

You are so tired of everything. You are tired of yourself. You are bored down to your bones. 

You are tired of watching from outside Time as the villagers walk around, working on meaningless shit, wasting hours talking and palling around. You are tired of watching them build up their little village, and of failing to break it down, even a little.

The distant past is even more empty and boring, and there's no food there. You decide to try the distant future instead. You whirl the sun across the sky until it's a bright, oscillating streak among the fainter tracks of the moons and stars. You push and push, watching buildings appear and disappear, erected then crumbling with age or pulled down and replaced in an instant. 

Only the bulk of that first, oldest building sits where it is unchanged. Its stone slabs weather slowly, their inexpert joints rounding and staining. Its roof is replaced and replaced again in tiles of all colors and patterns. Decorations flash on and off its facade in a predictable rhythm.

You scroll forward faster and faster. You don't stop until it is the last building in the valley with walls standing. 

Sunlight slants through holes in its ceiling, lighting up all the dust in the air so you can barely see a damn thing. The floor is more grass and moss than stone. You wander through the big rooms and the small ones. Here and there, a small plinth or shelf sits covered in dripped stains, mummified flowers or other odds and ends. Other than these, and some fallen debris, the rooms are empty. You barely recognize the big dining room, and you can't really imagine what most of the other rooms were used for. You could rewind backwards in any of them, watching a thousand sweeps of living unroll through their spaces.

Instead you go outside, exiting towards the shore. The deep porch is little more than a row of half-tumbled stone columns. The beach is surprisingly close now, dunes lapping at the remains of the garden terraces.

You are very surprised to see bright flags flying up on one of the bluff-tops, waving in the steady onshore breeze. 

The familiar, steep path was, at some point, set with stone stairs. Now each step has a u-shaped trough worn into it from a thousand sweeps of foot traffic. Peoples' lives have been lived here, leaving a mark on every inch of the place. The trees and plants are different. Even the cliffs look soiled, inhabited.

The flags are ragged with age when you get up close. They fly on a part of the bluff that was heavily forested in your time, but is now bare grass decorated with thirty-three large, flat stones, like doors into the ground. Each is carved with a set of symbols, so deeply worn that most are borderline-unrecognizable. Like the plinths, the stones sport trinkets and the mummified remains of food. They are streaked with wax, dark stains and bird shit.

Two people are seated at the edge of a deep, squared-off hole, lined in white stone and partially caved in. The long paver edging its foot is carved with your own U-shaped symbol and a Time gear.

Oh. 

The people watch you curiously as you approach. One is pale beneath a green sheen much like yours, his hair teal over red like corroded copper. The other shines rust-red all over, hair and skin such a closely matched brown that her amber eyes seem out of place. They are both older than you, fully grown adults. You're suddenly reminded just how young you and Dirk and everyone you know back there really are. 

“What are you doing?” you ask them.

Neither seems to have a weapon on them, though you keep your distance.

The green man smiles a loose, easy smile. “Oh, well. I know she's not the most popular of the thirty-four, but since both our Matrilines are involved we like to pay our respects. It's not like we're throwback culties or-”

“Excuse me,” the red woman interrupts. “Are you by any chance Caliborn, Lord of Time?”

It takes you a minute to parse all of this. Their accents are very strange and she pronounces your name so wrong you almost miss it.

“It's Caliborn,” you correct her. 

She breaks into a wide, delighted grin. “Caliborn?” she repeats.

You have to correct her twice more before she manages it passably. She whips out a small, hand-held screen and a stylus. 

“Are you taking notes?” you ask, incredulous. 

“This is a rare chance to collect information from a primary source,” she says, “My name is Innira Megido, First Muse of Time. As might be obvious from my title, I am an historian. This is my moirail, Hain of House Calliope.”

“Megido?” you say. 

“Ah! Is that the ancient pronunciation? Yes, I am Daughter of the Matriline of the Sacrifice, founded by the First Witch of Time.”

You shudder all over. “She had a child?”

She pauses in her note-taking and looks up at you. “Legends and ancient records both say that she had _your_ child.” 

Fuck. Fuuuuck.

“Is something wrong?” the green dude asks.

You shake your head. They both look a bit alarmed.

“Would you like to sit down?” Innira offers. 

“We brought cake for you,” the green dude says. “I'd much rather give it right to you than to leave it for your spirit or whatever. Here.”

You accept a paper-wrapped square from him and sit down on the edge of the hole, dangling your feet into it. The cake is nothing like the cake Faye gave you, lighter, sweeter and flavored with some kind of fruit. The sugar goes right to your head, steadying you. Fuck, you are getting too used to feeling hungry.

“The stories all say how much you like sweets. That's why it's the traditional offering for you,” Innira says.

“Are you related to Dirk?” you ask her, your mouth full.

“Yes. I am Whole-Son of the Matriline of the Narrow Blade, founded by the First Prince of Heart,” she says. 

“Uh. Are you a son or a daughter?” You had assumed she was a woman from her long hair and narrow shoulders, but looking again you're not so sure. The green man in similarly androgynous on closer inspection, his voice a touch too high to be male, a touch too low to be female.

“How could you not be a son and a daughter? You have to have a mother and at least one father, right?” Hain asks. 

“Remember, Hain, she is one of the Transported. They had no parents in this universe. I mean that I had one father and she was a direct matrilineal descendant of Dirk Strider.”

You can't make heads or tails of any of this daughter-son wordplay crap. Not important, you decide. Instead you correct her pronunciation of Dirk's name. 

“Your eyes are just like his,” you tell her. 

“That's right,” Hain says. “You two are friends in some of the stories.” 

“Then your stories are wrong and inaccurate lies. Dirk is so pale for me he's practically begging to shoosh me whenever I show up.” 

“Oh! How wonderful,” Innira says, scribbling another line with her stylus. Maybe they don't have sarcasm in the future. “There has been a lot of debate lately on the exact nature of your relationship. Accounts of that time period are getting more and more fragmentary as we lose access to the ancient computers. And congratulations on your moirallegience. I hope it was or will be fulfilling for you.” 

“I always thought you seemed like such a lonely character in the stories,” Hain says. He leans a little closer to Innira, so their shoulders rest together.

“Tell me one,” you demand. “A story they tell about me.”

They glance at each other. Innira nods. 

“Alright,” Hain says, “This is a story that supposedly happened six mothers back on my Line, to our Eighth Page of Space. 

“It was a time of great drought in the mountains where she lived. The streams had not run for seasons, and their flocks were dying slowly. One day as she was walking, she met a stranger on the path with one orange eye and one red. The stranger was dressed in a heavy black robe, though it was high-summer-Bright and very hot. The stranger said she was thirsty and asked for water. The Page gave the stranger her flask. The stranger drank and handed it back empty. The Page was dismayed; she had many more miles to walk that day, and little prospect of finding water before she reached her destination. The stranger demanded to know whether she was sorry she'd given her water and the Page explained about the drought. The stranger bid her follow and led her to a dry stream-bed, a place called Little Singing Falls. The stranger placed both hands on the rock, and suddenly water burst out all around her, swirling in the dust. In minutes the stream was running again. The Page was amazed and asked how she'd done it. The stranger told her that she'd simply brought all the water on the mountain forward from a different time. What time? Asked the Page. And the stranger gave the date that the drought began. That is the story as I was told it.”

“How many gears?” Innira asks.

“Three.”

That last exchange has an air of old, formal habit.

“So, the stranger was supposed to be me? Why the fuck am I a girl?”

“What's a girl?” Hain asks, blankly.

“Um. Not a boy? With like, uh,” you make an awkward gesture at your chest. Innira and Hain examine you with unnerving interest.

“You were calling me she,” you say, crossing your arms. “But I'm definitely a he.”

“Oh,” Innira says, writing. “In our time it is considered polite to refer to anyone who has come of age as 'she.' The word 'he' is used only for children. In the past that was different, now that you mention it. 'She' was reserved only for those who had borne a child, which all records indicate that you never did. I hope we have not offended you.”

You all sit there awkwardly for a moment. You pick at the cake-paper, trying to formulate something to say. 

“Never mind. Explain the gear thing,” you say, finally.

“It is said that one can tell your age by the number of tattoos you have,” Innira says. “It is supposedly important to know your age when encountering you, lest one provoke your wrath.”

Hain smiles a little. “There's even a counting rhyme about it that children sing. Something like: Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, for a sweet she'll bless your line. Eight, seven, six, five, play her game, come out alive. Four, three, two, one, any gears are better than none.”

You glance down at your bare forearm, remembering that smug, adult future you from when you first arrived.

“So, you should be afraid of me if I have no gears? You don't seem afraid of me.” It is, if you're honest with yourself, kind of relaxing to be around people who aren't afraid of you. Or worshiping you. Or aggressively trying to conciliate you.

“You're different than I always imagined,” Hain says. “You kind of don't even seem real, honestly. Because how could you possibly still be alive, after all this time?”

“She hasn't been, obviously,” Innira says. “She's the Lord of Time. All of Time is as one to her. And I'm guessing, for you, it hasn't been very long since you were transported to this world. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” you mutter. You are getting kind of sick of other people guessing shit about you so accurately.

Innira sighs. “That is one of those things I've always been curious about. What were the previous universes like? Is it true your bodies, your species were entirely different? How did it feel to be somewhere else and then here?” 

“Sucky, yes and fucking awful,” you say. 

They blink at you. Hain starts giggling, muffling it behind his hand. 

“You're really nothing like I imagined, yet somehow just like the stories all say,” Innira says, smiling, “A Lord through and through.”

“You've met other Lords?” you ask.

“Oh, no. Of course not. Lords are extremely rare. There have only been three in recorded history, including you. Muses are somewhat more common, though it's said that a Lord will always be born with a Muse, to keep the balance. Indeed, both the other Lords had Muses as close companions, and records hold that there was a Muse of Space in your time, the First of House Calliope.”

“My sister,” you say. “I hate her guts.”

“Indeed. Muses and Lords are completely opposite in power, personality and thinking. Your conflict with your sister is known from records, though like many events that far in the past, accounts are contradictory and fragmented. The most recent Lord was a Lord of Breath, who finally died some four hundred sweeps ago. Her Muse of Rage was also her moirail and the pair had several children. She was very charismatic, in the way of Breath players, and they amassed a large enough following that the Council of Matrilines felt their authority threatened and considered taking military action against them. The war would have been bloody indeed, had the Muse not prevented it. Instead the pair and their followers left for the eastern continent, founding the first permanent settlements on its far coast. So, in that case, their opposite nature served to protect those around them.

“The Lord of Hope and the Muse of Blood are a different and far darker tale. Though Blood players typically value social harmony above all things, the Muse of Blood was obsessed with wiping away the old social order and replacing it with one she considered superior. Perhaps it was the Lord of Hope's influence that drove her to this conclusion, or perhaps not. The clarity of vision a Muse has can be a heavy burden. Their relationship was said to be tumultuous, flipping black to red unpredictably. It is also said that they killed so many of their auspistices that no one dared try to step in. The power of the Lord of Hope was awesome indeed. From all reports she was capable of warping reality into nearly anything she desired. It took a coalition of many powerful Players to eventually defeat them. Truly a dark period in history, and one from which many of the holes in our historical records originate.

“Further back still, there is a two hundred sweep period starting in the third century for which no records exist. It's speculated that this is due to the appearance of a Lord of Void, though a Muse or sufficiently powerful Slyph or Seer could have created such a gap as well.”

Hain elbows her. She pauses, then says, “Goodness, I'm lecturing, aren't I? My apologies. I take it this is the first you've heard of these things?”

“Yeah.”

“You're still young,” she smiles at you maternally. “Your reputation is for showing up at important moments in history, at once cause and solution to the various crises you've recordedly influenced. Thus your role in the legends as a trickster figure. Your life will be very exciting. The kind of life stories are told about for all Time.”

“You're the only people from the future I've really talked to,” you say. “Oh, and some other random kid who gave me cake once. He said he filed his horns down to look like mine, so I told him that he was a fucking moron.”

She raises an eyebrow, the gesture startlingly like Dirk's. “You told him you were just a person, and not a very good one?”

“How the fuck do you know that?”

“If you're talking about the incident I'm thinking of, your little one liner set off the bloodiest religious conflict of the seventh century.”

Your jaw goes slack, because holy shit. 

“They had a war about whether to mutilate their horns?”

“And about whether you are just a person.”

“So basically, what you're saying is, I pop up randomly in Time and fuck shit up. And sometimes I won't even know how bad I fucked it up.” 

“So it seems,” she says.

She gives you a benign smile, as if trying to ease your sudden tension. Hain looks back and forth between you like this is some kind of great entertainment to him. You wonder how he puts up with her and her rambling history lessons all the time.

You try to imagine yourself as a mysterious Time-hopping, war-starting, drought-stopping badass. Maybe you're one of the ones who kicked the Lord of Hope's ass. You think you could fuck his shit up pretty good.

You glance back over at them, descendants of your hideous bitch sister and the girl who kissed you right before you murdered her in cold blood. 

“Thanks for the cake,” you say, standing. 

“Wait,” Innira says, though she makes no move to touch you. “I would really like, if you don't mind, to ask you some more questions.”

“I don't know anything about anything,” you tell her, scowling. “Learning shit isn't really my thing.”

“I come here on pilgrimage every sweep. Perhaps, if you wouldn't mind, we could visit again some day?”

She looks so hopeful, her eyes so like Dirk's it hurts a little. 

“Maybe,” you tell her, and slip backwards into the past.

~

You meander backwards through Time, watching, looking out for any of these supposed interesting historical events that you were/will be a part of. For the latest years, no one really lives here. People leave, walking up the valley-path, sailing from the bay in ships or flying away in weird balloon things. They camp, meander around, decorate or undecorate the ruins of that first building, then arrive.

You begin to scroll faster through all the sweeps and sweeps of that shit, slowing only when you abruptly notice that people down below are cleaning up a swath of downed trees. The area becomes progressively more devastated as you watch, and you slow further so you won't miss whatever happened.

Water pours up the valley, uprooted trees and wreckage flowing with it, back to their former places. The water rises higher and higher against the cliff sides, and a huge spume of spray lifts into the air all around you, flying back into a sea raging in reverse. A huge wave sweeps out of the valley and bay, revealing the reefs and sandbars of the bay bottom. Also revealed, a line of pathetically small-looking figures stand hands-joined in the porch of the building below. Apparently whatever they did worked, since that building has gone from being the only one standing to the shabbiest and least impressive of an interlocking, broken down sprawl. 

You must have been going too fast to notice this whole drama the first time around. You speed up more as people begin reverse-evacuating back to their homes. Other than the volume of people, and the more frequent comings and goings of ships, not much changes. A few times you slow to watch navel battles offshore, standing unseen in a crowd as distant explosions flicker across the water. But other than that, not a fuck of a lot happens here, ever. As far as you can tell, life in this valley is peaceful and boring as shit. Maybe all that good stuff those future weirdos were talking about happens somewhere else.

Luckily, your empty grave has a regular supply of delicious sugary offerings left on it, which you're able to stop and scoop up after whoever left them fucks off. It's enough to fuel your passage backward, toward more familiar territory.

By the time you get back to the forest you remember here, the faces felling the trees are familiar.

As you slide back into the present, you start to feel shaky all over. You haven't traveled so far all at once since your first, headlong flight through Time.

You can't think of a single good reason not to let yourself collapse, so you do.

When you wake up, plunging from a screaming nightmare into harsh, sun-drenched reality, it is immediately evident why this was a bad, bad, bad idea.

You are surrounded.

You thrash upright, dislodging the smuppet tucked under your head and the length of thin cloth tossed over your shoulders.

“Ohmigod, dude, don't panic!” someone says. 

YOU ARE IN NO DANGER, MY LORD.

Makara. You relax a little, grounded by his familiar touch along the planes of your mind. It was the Roxy human who spoke, you recognize her. Dirk is there, too, sewing on an odd bundle of fabric. Other people you don't know the names of are sitting ranged around you in a circle, mostly in shades of purple, green and pink. All are working away with needles big or small and arcane combinations of fabric and string. The looks they're giving you range from amused to resigned. 

But the thing that really makes your breath back up in your chest is the fact that your sister is there. Her look is the most horrible of all, as if she's been worried about you. Ugh.

“What the fuck,” you manage.

“It's called a stitch-n-bitch, dude,” Dirk says. “We sit around mending shit, drinking and complaining. It's like Earth Human group therapy.”

“But with a complete lack of professionalism or clinical oversight,” one of the purple bitches says. She has upright, wavy horns, pale hair, and a penetrating sharpness to her eyes. 

“Rose, if your presence does not qualify as clinical oversight, I cannot imagine what on this planet might,” says the green bitch sitting next to her. 

“Yes, usually. I'm both mildly intoxicated and firmly off-duty at the moment, however.”

“Amen to that,” Roxy says, lifting a wooden cup at her and swigging from it. “Cal, you want a glass of wine?”

“Not on an empty stomach, he doesn't,” Dirk says, “And I guarantee you it's empty.”

“Is not,” you say, ignoring the way it's rumbling at the mere mention of food.

“Right,” Dirk says. “So, what was the last thing you ate?”

“Cake,” you tell him, crossing your arms. “Delicious future cake. From the future.”

“And before that?”

“Same.”

“Before that?”

“Not sure, but it was goddamn delicious.”

“More sweets, then. Before that?”

“Uh. Cake? Or maybe beer.”

“We fuckin get it, jeez,” one of the purple bitches says, in a voice too deep to match her neat plaid skirt and purple-streaked pigtails.

“Caliborn,” your sister scolds, “You need to take better care of yourself! You look awful! When we found you here, you wouldn't even wake up. You scared us!”

“You're going to eat some real food right this second, young man,” one of them tells you. She's a green bitch with one barbed horn and absolutely amazing knockers, and her tone brooks no negotiation. She digs through a basket at her side and comes up with a sandwich.

She thrusts it into your hands then stands over you, hands on hips, as you peek between the slices of bread.

“Don't you dare take the vegetables out of there, either,” she says. “You're going to eat that whole thing whether it's together or in pieces.”

“I could disintegrate you. I could make you so old those tits hang down to your knees,” you tell her.

Around you, the circle goes silent and tense, people gripping their various needles like weapons. You are suddenly trapped in the middle of the most terrifying stitch-n-bitch in all paradox space. Makara's mental touch lands light against your mind, not pushing, not approving or disapproving, but present. You're not sure if this him would back you or try to stop you. You know exactly how easily he could stop you.

The woman standing over you narrows her eyes and bares her teeth in a polite, deeply frightening smile. “You could try,” she says.

You stare up at her. She stares back, unmoving. 

You take a bite of the sandwich. Rich meat and some kind of tangy sauce make up for the dense bread and nasty crunch of vegetables. She stands over you until you finish the whole thing, then makes you eat a second one.

“You're welcome,” she says, and sits back down at her sewing.

“I don't get it,” you say. “Why the fuck are you people being nice to me?”

Several of them roll their eyes at you, including Dirk. Makara wordlessly touches your mind again, a glancing, reassuring caress. He is peeking at you from under his long eyelashes when you look at him, his hands busy with a weird hook and a snarl of yarn. 

“Cal,” Dirk says, “You need to try to apply some logic to the situation, instead of letting yourself get all carried away and over-emotional like you always do.”

“Well maybe you need to try and have some fucking emotions, instead of thinking about everything like a fucking computer like you always do!” 

To your surprise, the circle bursts into giggles. Roxy pitches sideways onto her stomach and punches Dirk in the knee as she laughs. 

“Truly yours is a rare gem among moirallegiences,” one of the green chicks says.

Roxy recovers herself and hands you a cup. You sniff it and find it's only water. 

“It's been like ten sweeps since we really had a problem with you, you know? Or, I guess you wouldn't, yet,” she says, checking out your bare forearm.

“Careful,” Dirk says. “Rule two.”

“Whatever, Dirkums. Look, Cal. We know you pretty well by now, that's all. We have dealt with your shit before. And, mostly, we forgive you. Long's you're not actively being an asshole. Now, if you want some wine you're gonna have to drink that up. I don't have any extra cups with me.”

“You forgive me,” you state, flatly. Your gorge rises at the thought. You are still exhausted, half-shaky with dissipating adrenaline. You don't know how to feel about anything anymore.

“Which isn't to say we approve of your tantrums or your general lack of manners,” Rose says.

“Or your fashion sense,” the green girl next to her mutters.

“Oh, Cal,” your sister says in her grating, musical voice. “We're your _family._ You'll have to forgive yourself, too, at some point.”

“I haven't _done_ anything,” you snarl at her, remembering the feel of hot blood soaking through your clothes, squishing in your shoes. She gives you a disgustingly mushy smile in return. Your eyes feel hot and prickly. Your head aches.

You realize you only have two choices: you can break down and cry on Dirk's shoulder like a little girl, or you can get really fucking angry.

You choose anger. Yes, you insist to yourself, it feels fucking great to be angry. 

You peg your full cup of water right at Roxy. 

“Oh, you little fucker!” she says. “Not the knitting!”

“I will shoosh you right in front of everybody, so help me,” Dirk threatens. 

You glare at him.

“Why the fuck are you so fat?” you ask him.

“I'm pregnant, you asshole,” he says. 

“Oh fuck, that is so awkward.”

He snorts. “Guess you just made it that way.”

Everyone stares at you for a second and it is awkward. It is so fucking awkward. 

“So, why haven't you disappeared yet?” Dirk asks conversationally. “Usually when you act out like a one sweep old you abscond right away.” 

“I can't,” you snarl. You've been trying. It's not working. Just like that first time, you must have overtired yourself. Fuck. 

“You just get back from one of your distant future walkabouts, then?” Dirk asks. 

“I can't tell you. Rule number two,” you say, snidely.

“It was my understanding that Rule Two only referred to events that personally effect the individual being spoilered,” Rose says. “Not events so distant they might as well be stories, or located in future branches that may never come to pass. So there is no logical reason that you can't tell us about your trip.” The hunger in her voice makes you nervous. 

“Yeah, honey, tell us about your day,” Dirk says, smirking.

“I saw the valley get fucking annihilated by a big wave,” you tell them.

You savor the shocked pause. 

“And how many sweeps from now is that?” Rose asks.

You calculate. “Sixteen hundred and ninety eight.”

“May I ask for a more exact date?”

“Uh. Beginning of winter. Why?”

“So I can leave a warning. Thank you, Cal, your information often proves valuable. And when you get a chance, do try to talk to Damara or Aradia about their calendar. I think you'll find it very helpful.” 

Damara is the Timewitch's name, you remember. Fuck. Makara touches your mind, and the tension in your shoulders releases like a popped spring. One of your elbows buckles. You flop back into the grass with a grunt. His mental presence feels simultaneously good and too much, like ice against fevered skin. It's a distraction, anyway.

You are not going anywhere and apparently neither are they. The sun is Dim, a bite taken out of its side by the passage of the biggest moon. The gaps in the leaves above scatter projections of its crescent across the ground and trees. You attempt to relax as your audience returns to their stitching. No further bitching occurs.

You wonder, briefly, why you haven't been assaulted by any children, yet. You are far enough forward in time that there must be a whole fuckload of them somewhere. 

KHARON IS FISHING TODAY. HE WILL LIKELY CONVINCE THEM TO RETURN EARLY IF HE IS CLOSE ENOUGH TO SENSE YOUR PRESENCE.

You glower, trying to throw the feeling at him as hard as you can. He responds with a brush of amusement like tickling claws and withdraws himself.

You feel that sensation again, like you're empty. Like the sun can fall right through you to the grass beneath, unimpeded. You want to sleep more. 

You want to sleep.

Kharon is there when you wake up again. He looks about the same as you remember from the humiliating psychic beatdown he gave you. He's sitting with his knees hugged close to his chest, watching you. 

Makara sits near him, still hooking away at his yarn. Behind them, you think you can see Dirk and Jake sprawled in a pile of stuffed animals and sleeping children.

“Hi, Dad,” Kharon says.

“Uh. Hi,” you say. 

He scrubs at his pale, fluffy hair, grimacing. “I'm sorry I hurt you,” he says. “I apologized to you the next time I saw you, too, but this you is closer to that one, so I wanted to say it again. So. Sorry.”

He's not looking at you, picking at the grass. You don't know what to say.

He says, “I still love you, even though you're kind of motherfucking awful sometimes.”

He cracks open his mind and shows you, the feeling like a well of molten light, searing and overwhelmingly bright. You can feel Makara's touch, too, a column of sheltering shadow. You think your chest is going to split down the middle and you will spill out of yourself, exposed, a gushy, confused mess of feelings soaking into the dirt.

Dirk catches your pleading, panicky gaze and gives you a thumbs up. Goddamn, he's so irritating. It steadies you. 

“I forgive you,” you tell your kid. “Fucking stop it.”

He vanishes from your mind. Makara gives you a little nudge of disapproval, before closing himself off as well. 

You sigh, gripping your horns, feeling the way they root into your skull. You tug on them until it hurts, just a little.

Kharon is watching you, still. 

“I just. I didn't. Fuck. I'm not used to this shit.” You're kind of getting used to it though, and that's what bothers you.

He cocks his head at you. “I think I know what you mean,” he says. “Sorry. I'm still learning. So, yeah. Sorry.”

“Stop fucking apologizing,” you snap. 

He smiles at you a little, but also looks like he might start crying or something.

“Oh, fuck. Don't fucking start crying, kid. Please.”

He nods, scrubbing at his eyes.

“Can I have a hug?” he asks, in a small, embarrassed voice.

Makara's thoughts nudge you. He has absolute faith that you will do this thing and not disappoint him.

You nod. Kharon shuffles over to you hesitantly. He is gangly and not at home with his limbs, with the dimensions of his body. He leans his head on your shoulder, and you awkwardly settle your arm around his back.

You let him stay there until Faye comes running up and throws herself across both your laps, laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify the daughter-son wordplay crap:  
> Their species only has one sex - any person can either bear or sire a child. By the time of Innira and Hain, there is no longer a concept of gender, either. Their primary means of tracing ancestry is **direct matrilineal descent,** which only makes sense when you can potentially have an unlimited number of genetic contributors (fathers), but only one of those (the mother) actually bears the egg. So, people in Innira's time period and culture consider themselves to be a Daughter of their Mother and their Mother's Matriline, and a Son of their Father(s) and their Father(s) Matriline(s). The gendered-ness of the word here only serves to indicate their genetic relationship to the parent they're referring to, not their own gender (they have none). A Player's Aspect is always inherited from their Mother, thus all Daughters of a Matriline will share the same Aspect. In Innira's society, Matrilines are also political/economic units, like clans or guilds. Every Matriline can be traced back to one of the original 34 Players who escaped sBurb, with the exception of Cal, who, according to Innara, never bears a child.  
>  For more see my [Matrilines](http://universe-c.tumblr.com/post/53037021719/i-am-so-curious-about-the-future-history-of-the), [troll-human hybrid](http://universe-c.tumblr.com/post/38990320832/5i-meta-post-troll-human-hybrids) and [Aspects and Classes](http://universe-c.tumblr.com/post/38928287413/5i-meta-post-aspects-and-classes) meta posts.


	5. Tenderness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings this chapter: radioactive levels of cute, lactation

You appear in the kitchen. Jane Crocker nearly jumps out of her skin when she turns and sees you digging into a half-eaten platter of cold meat. 

“Oh!” she says, then, “Well. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you'd turn up now of all times.”

“What the fuck are you on about?” you ask. 

Her eyes widen as they land on your forearm. That is starting to piss you off. 

“You'll find out,” she says, giving you one of her hard looks. 

She is so solid, somehow more real than the potted herbs lining the deep window-sills, the rough wooden furniture, or even the stones of the walls and floor. Her gaze is utterly unafraid and utterly unimpressed. You remember the heavy force of her fork connecting with your ribcage and smile.

“There you are!” someone says. 

Fuuuuuck. It's your sister. She's got you by the wrist before you manage to abscond.

Jane grins a little at the look of annoyance on your face. 

“Take some of that with you, if you're hungry. Just remember that I'm not going to keep feeding you unless you start doing some work around here.” She nods to Calliope. “You and Dirk keep him out of trouble, okay?”

“We can only try,” the bitch says, dryly. Her hand on you is like a shackle.

You scoop up a huge stack of meat slices with your bare hand. Calliope eyes you with distaste. 

“What?” you ask, deliberately chewing with your mouth open. “You can just let me the fuck go if you don't like it.” 

“You are completely horrible, as you always are,” she says. “Now, come on. I have to take you to see some people before we go out. Jane you'll come out when it's time, right?”

“Don't worry,” Jane says, voice infinitely warmer and kinder than when she was talking to you. “I'll know before you will.” 

Jane turns back toward the bowl of whatever it is she's mixing, smiling over her shoulder. Calliope smiles back. You wonder if they've ever – ugh – cuddled. How disturbing.

Calliope drags you into the dining block. Three people are standing there, obviously waiting for you. 

“Our Seers,” Calliope tells you, “Kankri, Terezi and Rose.”

They look at you. You can practically feel their power crawling all over your brain. You stare back, insolently chewing on some meat like their appraisal isn't bothering you at all.

“I have never seen anyone with such enormous potential, both to harm and to help,” the guy says. He's like a slimmer, snootier version of what's his face from the beer incident. He stands with arms crossed and head tilted at an arrogant angle. All three of them are small. It's kind of nice to be the tallest person in the room, for once – if you don't count the fact that your sister's stupid ugly horns are taller than yours. You totally don't. 

“We have a long way to go, if we wish to find common ground,” he continues, “But I'm afraid there is little choice but to try. Tell me, Lord English, do you seek safety among us?”

They all look at you as if expecting an answer. You shove some more meat in your mouth, stalling. Seriously, what the fuck kind of question is that?

The teal-colored girl smiles with all her teeth, leans in close and _sniffs_ you. 

“What the fuck!” you say, recoiling. 

“He reeks of guilt,” she pronounces. “Guilt and old blood.”

“Nevertheless,” says Rose, “I suggest we allow him to attend. I believe it will be in everyone's best interest.” She is paler than her older self, purple-tinged as a shiny drowned corpse. Her features are surprisingly similar to Dirk's now that you look closer.

“I concur,” the red guy says.

“It's either that or let me cull him right now.” Teal-girl grins and strokes the dragon-shaped head of her cane.

“Dirk and I will take responsibility for him,” Calliope says.

“Why the fuck do I need any of you assholes to take responsibility for me?” you ask. 

Teal cackles merrily, slapping her sides. Rose's mouth draws into a subtle, sardonic smile, and even the snooty guy looks faintly amused under his incredulous eyebrow-raise.

“Because you have a history of violent outbursts, and have yet to earn the trust of this community,” he says, bluntly. “However, please be assured of your welcome during the hatching. We would not attempt to separate you from family unless you prove it necessary.”

“I don't have a family,” you say. Calliope pinches your side, hard. 

“Bitch,” you say, dodging a second grab at your ribs.

“Ooh! You make me so angry sometimes. The sooner I can hand you off to Dirk, the better,” she says.

Rose's face is studiously neutral but her eyes are laughing. “Why don't you take him out, then? As one might expect from the Lord of Time, he is nothing if not punctual.”

“What the fuck is with this mysterious horseshit you all keep talking around?” you ask. You rip a hunk out of your last slice of meat, eyeing up your sister's dumb, green face. You'd love to punch it, but you don't think you'd get away with it. These people _like_ her for some unfathomable reason. She'd just dodge like a fucking coward anyway.

Rather than reply, she drags you down a shadowy hallway and out into the yard. You freeze, digging your heels in as she steers you around the back of another building. 

There are so many _people_ out here. Fuck. 

Blankets are scattered under the trees and in the sun, forming a wide ring. In the center, the unmistakable shapes of the clowns and that bitch you killed sit with a few others in two distinct clusters. It seems like everyone in the village is there, occupying themselves with various small tasks. Some are mending clothes or spinning, carving small bits of wood, working on piles of hides. A few nap, singly or in shameful cuddling groups. The low murmur of voices fades as people notice you, a ring of silence spreading outwards from where you stand. 

Calliope tugs futilely at your wrist. You consider gnawing your arm off at the elbow to escape.

Dirk picks himself up from a sheet covered in delicate machine parts and hurries over to you.

“I wondered which you would show,” he says, clapping you on the shoulder. “Callie, you want me to take him from here?”

“Please! He's being all around terrible.”

“Is it my fault you can't deal with my witty repartee?” 

“What repartee? You're just being a huge, childish jerk for no reason, like you always are.”

Everyone around you is watching, listening to your every word. It makes your skin crawl.

“Come on, dude,” Dirk says. “We're all just waiting around at this point. You might as well chill out. I got him, Callie.”

“Good.” Calliope drops your hand and walks off like she can't get away fast enough. You do not resist the urge to stick your tongue out at her back. You don't even try. 

“Will you explain to me what the fuck the big deal is, here? I'm starting to get pissed off.”

“The big deal is this,” Dirk says, steering you straight towards the center of the circle. “You're going to be a dad. Congratulations.”

“Like I don't fucking know that already,” you say. “He was the first person I met on this shitball planet.” 

“Your kid?” Dirk says. “You never told me that. Though, careful, man. Rule two.” 

The people on the center pair of blankets look up as you approach. Makara and the Timewitch smile at you. Your ex-guide and the three people with him range from glowering to cautiously friendly. Each group is camped around a big egg, nested in a supportive ring of towels.

“Yo,” Dirk says. He elbows you.

“What?” you ask. 

“I guess a modicum of fucking courtesy is too much to expect.” One of your ex-guide's circle is that guy, uh, Van-something. His face is a study in barely-restrained annoyance. “Though, look who I'm talking to here: the messiest, most schizophrenic fake moirallegience conceivable. Sit down, dipshits, and don't you fucking dare ruin this.”

You surprise yourself, growling in your throat. “Fuck you,” you tell him.

“Great comeback, fuckass. Sit!”

Dirk folds himself down onto the blanket, dragging you with him. You lose your balance and half-fall against his side. A large, cool hand lands on your back, steadying you. 

MY LORD.

Makara smiles at you softly. It makes a panicky, buoyant bubble form in your chest. The Timewitch leans around him and takes your free hand, pressing it to her lips, then her forehead. She says something you can't follow through her incomprehensible accent.

“She says she's glad to see you,” Dirk says. Fuck. You yank your hand back.

“Easy,” Dirk says. Makara strokes your shoulder reassuringly. You shudder. 

Okay. You've got to keep your shit together. You remind yourself that this is well before any murder-related incidents occur. None of them _know._

There is a thud behind you, like something heavy striking dirt. You half-turn.

“What the actual fuck, Meenah,” the grouchy guy says.

Some fin-face bitch stands behind you sporting ripped jeans, too many bracelets and floor-length braids. She's leaning casually on a tall, double-headed trident. 

“Shut it, Vantas,” the fishbitch says. “You think I'mma just let him sit there like it ain't nofin? You know me better than that. Community Safety Committee represent.”

“This is _spectacularly_ unhelpful,” Vantas says.

Damara glides to her feet. She plucks the wicked-looking needles from her hair, letting it fall straight and shining around her shoulders. 

MY SISTER IN ARMS. SIT YOUR ASS BACK DOWN BEFORE YOU MAR THIS MIRACULOUS MOTHERFUCKING OCCASION.

The Timewitch shoots Makara a poisonous glare, and takes another step toward the fishbitch. Fishbitch grins and picks up her trident. 

The wave of chill-the-fuck-out that slams off Makara is so powerful it makes both of those bitches' knees visibly shake. Around you, people sway in their seats and sleepers awake. Your own grinding annoyance with this whole escapade is blown away like a dissipating dream.

“We up and got this motherfucker,” your ex-guide says, mildly. “So put your motherfucking culling fork away before I up and do it for you.”

The two combatants stumble back a step and turn away from each other.

The Timewitch sits back down at your clown's side, glaring at him half-heartedly. Makara takes her needles and uses them to put her hair back up. The fishbitch makes herself scarce.

Dirk squeezes your hand. For possibly the first time ever you appreciate it. 

“That was barely even your fault. Those two will take any excuse to go for each other,” he tells you.

“I still don't even know what the fuck is going on here,” you say.

“Uh, well, none of us really know, since it's the first time it's happened,” says the brown, wide-horned guy sitting at your ex-guide's side. He's Faye's father, you remember. “But we're waiting for the eggs to hatch. You maybe know better than we do, even, if you've been to the future. Did you really, uh, meet your kid already?”

“Yeah,” you say. It's kind of nice to just sit without all that fear and anger boiling around in your skull. It almost makes the pointed stares of everyone in the village less threatening. “A couple times.”

“Have you ever met her?” he asks, smoothing his fingers over the brown shell of his egg.

Oh. Oh, fuck, that's right. Babies come from eggs. 

Where the fuck else would they come from, you guess.

“Yeah,” you say.

“What's she like?”

“Rule two,” Dirk cuts in. “That's no spoilers, Tavros, in case you're wondering.”

“Stupidly fucking tall. And stupidly fucking fearless,” you say. Dirk digs his elbow into your side.

Tavros grins at you like you just made his whole life.

“Are you going to introduce us?” the fourth person on the other blanket asks, brightly. She's like a slightly distorted copy of the Timewitch, younger looking and much more cheerful.

“Sure,” Dirk says, suave and in charge again all the sudden. “Aradia Megido, meet Caliborn. Cal, this is Aradia, and her moirail, Tavros Nitram. His matesprit, Gamzee Makara. And Gamzee's moirail, Karkat Vantas. You know Kurloz and Damara already, I'm sure.” 

“I remember,” you say, pointing. “You got me drunk, you tried to asphyxiate me and you I shot full of holes.” 

Karkat facepalms.

“Long motherfucking time ago that was,” Gamzee comments, placidly. 

“I don't remember that,” Tavros says. “Future me? Oh, sorry. The rules. Right, uh. Never mind.”

“He make _noise,”_ Damara says, and the reverent hush in her voice is more startling than her usual acerbic tone by far. She is bent close to the red and purple egg in front of Kurloz.

Everyone stares at her for a moment, then leans in, listening. You do too, in spite of yourself.

The egg makes a tiny, high-pitched squeak. It rocks very slightly in its little nest of towels. The shell deforms, as if something is pressing against it from inside.

“Oh,” someone breathes. Or maybe everyone.

It is somehow mesmerizing. Dirk and Damara both clutch at your hands. You ignore the exclamations coming from the other blanket, the hum of the assembled crowd. Jane's voice admonishes someone about something, but you don't fucking care what.

Two sharp little points press and press against the eggshell, nudging it with sharp little grunts of effort. Finally, it splits around them, revealing damp, pale indigo-tinged hair and a pair of yellow horns. They are stupefyingly tiny and already have Kharon's characteristic shape, placed like yours, spiraled like Kurloz's. 

“Don't touch,” Jane says. You draw your hand back. You're not sure what you were going to do with it anyway. “It's important that we not rush them. Everyone who's not a parent should back off now, in case they imprint like birds.”

You barely notice Dirk leaving your side. Kurloz shifts closer to you, his long arm pressed against yours. His calm is massive beside you, a comforting presence to lean your mind against. 

The child shifts and rests, squirming against the tough skin of the egg. He makes small, high noises of effort or frustration. The egg rolls in its nest. Then, a small, curled hand makes its way through the split, and your son peels the shell away from his small, scrunched face. He opens his rust orange eyes, looks up at you and _smiles_.

Your heart bursts into a million sharp shards. 

You and Kurloz reach for him at the same time, Kurloz to peel away the remnant of the egg. You simply touch him, watching his tiny, perfect fingers wrap around yours. He is shiny all over with purple dampness, a pudgy bundle of helplessness. He yawns, revealing toothless gums and a miniature, purple-pink tongue. 

It should be completely disgusting. This welling of gooshy, tender feelings should be completely disgusting. You cling to the remnant of your calm under his semi-focused baby gaze. Maybe at some point, you'll remember how to breathe. 

Kurloz pulls away from your side and shrugs one shoulder of his robe off. Kharon makes a small noise when Kurloz scoops him carefully from the towel-nest and settles him against his skin.

“What are you doing?” you mumble, leaning helplessly closer against his bare shoulder. 

FEEDING HIM.

The clown's flesh is warm, much warmer than his thoughts. The child is warm and fragile, tiny in his big hands. Kharon turns his face against Kurloz's chest with a sound of complaint. 

“You have to help him find the nipple,” Jane says. “Just stick it right in his mouth. He should know what to do.”

Kurloz adjusts, more of his weight leaning against your chest. You have draped yourself all over him without your even noticing, your cheek pressed against his shoulder as you stare down at the child. Kharon looks back up at you both, solemn, his mouth occupied at the soft swell of Kurloz's breast. It's barely a tit, really, nothing like the knockers on a real bitch, but it's more than he was packing last you saw him. You wonder how it feels.

Kurloz projects a weird, suckling, tickling relief at you, underlain with awe and a deep, chest-squeezing tenderness. It makes you squirm, your arm around him tightening involuntarily.

“Don't panic,” Dirk murmurs in your ear.

“I'm not,” you insist.

“Good.”

Damara is suddenly close, too, smiling at you from the other side of Kurloz. You can't look her in the face. Instead, you glance over toward the other blanket, where a similar knot has formed around the child in Tavros's arms. Around you, the watchers have given up any pretense of working on other things. Most are sitting in pairs or little clumps with an egg somewhere at their center. All eyes are on you, still, curious but no longer hostile. Jane and Roxy stand not far off, Roxy wiping tears from her eyes. Someone you don't recognize hurries up to them and Roxy buries her face in his scarf, petting his egg.

There is a disgusting amount of snuggling going on. You are snuggled all up to your creepy-ass clown and your kid and Dirk and the Timewitch. You force yourself to take a deep breath. 

A tiny, complaining cry jerks your attention back to the baby. You reach for him almost before you know what you're doing, smoothing his downy, drying hair.

“He's like... a miniature person,” you say. Fuck, that was probably one of the stupider things to ever come out of your mouth, ever. Kurloz and Damara kind of just nod, though. It's strange to see the clown's intensity turned on something other than yourself.

Eventually, Kharon turns his face away from Kurloz's breast. You wipe your finger curiously through the trickle of yellow-white fluid and baby spit.

“Mammalian milk glands are modified sweat glands, found in two long lines down the front of the body,” Dirk tells you.

You freeze with your finger in your mouth.

“It's called collustrum at this stage,” Jane says matter-of-factly. “It's high in antibodies to protect against disease.”

You pull a face. Kurloz shakes a little in silent laughter and Damara snickers. The milk is sweet and strange, like nothing else you've ever tasted.

Kurloz nudges you off him, arranges your arms, then places the child in them.

“You have to support his head,” Dirk says, arranging you further, “There.”

“How the fuck do you know all this, Strider?” you mutter.

“Crocker made us all practice on dolls,” he says. 

“I'm glad she did,” Tavros comments from the other blanket. “Otherwise I might be kind of freaking out right now.”

You are not, not, not freaking out, though you may in fact be slightly afraid to move. Dirk rubs at your shoulders, until you give in and sag against him. Kharon shifts his slight weight in your arms, alarmingly comfortable to hold. He smiles at you again, blinking like he can't keep his eyes open. The shards of your heart tumble inside you like sand in a wave, slicing you up till you feel raw. 

“I think he's falling asleep,” you whisper. “Uh. What do I do?”

“You're fine,” Dirk says. “Shh.”

Kurloz touches your face softly, smiling at you like he might actually mean it.

“Oh Kurly,” someone says, just a touch too loudly. “He's lovely! I'm so happy for you!!”

An olive-green girl with a tumble of long hair drapes herself over Kurloz's shoulders, looking you and the child over and grinning like she might explode at any second. She reaches down and traces Kharon's arm with careful fingers. Kurloz squeezes her other hand, a shadow of pain clouding his face. You don't like it. You lift your lip at her, showing your teeth. 

“None of that, now,” Dirk says, papping your shoulder.

The green woman moves off, escorted by a disapproving blue dude and chased by your glare. Jane moves in, kneeling in front of you on the blanket. 

“I'm just going to check that he's healthy,” she says, like she's asking your permission. You wonder what you'll do if she tries to take Kharon from you. She waits until you nod, then hovers a hand over him. You're reminded again of that realness, that sense of presence she had in the kitchen. 

“He's very strong,” she says. “You, on the other hand, feel like you've been pushing yourself too long on too little rest. You could stand to start eating better, too.”

“We'll take care of it,” Dirk says, squeezing your shoulder.

Across the way, the trident bitch is kneeling unwillingly at Gamzee's side, egged on by another magenta-colored girl. Suddenly you recognize her as your other betrayer, some kind of teenaged, punked-out version of the Condesce. The look of consternation on her face makes you want to laugh. 

You carefully don't laugh, afraid you wouldn't be able to stop. You feel yourself start to shake a little at being hemmed in like this. There are too many people touching you and looking at you, after so long wandering Time like a ghost, after your whole life alone.

Dirk shooshes you again. Damara pats your knee and Kurloz pushes a gentle wave of calm at you. Kharon stirs in his sleep, his tiny fist tugging at your shirt.

“I'm not even going to ask what all these stains are,” Dirk says. “But I will find you some clean clothes if you want.”

“Okay,” you mumble, bile and blood-stench welling in your throat. 

You breathe deep, trying to memorize the sweet smell of the child in your arms.

~

It feels strange and confusing to wake up naturally, without any nightmares, looming threats or psychic fuckery in progress.

There are arms fastened around you, strong and restraining, and your face is mashed into a pillowy breast. You are laying half on top of the Timewitch and she isn't wearing a shirt. 

She smells much nicer with all her viscera still inside her.

A fussy cry makes you freeze and suddenly you know exactly what woke you. There is a baby somewhere right behind you. You feel a small limb press against your bare back. Fuck. 

The nest of cushions shifts and a hand slides over your shoulder blade. You crane your neck around, watching Kurloz scrub at his bleary eyes then situate Kharon at his chest.

You roll over and find yourself with your face propped on his thigh. He's so thin. Kharon will inherit your stockier build, and you're kind of glad. Damara shifts as you do, making a faint, protesting noise. Her horn pokes you in the back as she curls against you.

Kurloz's fingers feel so nice in your hair that it kind of makes you want to scream. He massages your scalp near the base of your horn and brushes your mind with the sensation of nursing. It's a complex layering of feelings: protectiveness, relief-of-discomfort, love and awe, easily one of the filthiest things you've ever felt. 

You realize you're clinging to the clown like a shipwrecked sailor to some splintery floating spar. Also, he's totally naked. There are definitely some naked boobs touching you, too. After a moment of panic, you discern that you are still wearing your pants. You wonder at your relief a moment later, when you reexamine the idea of being naked around either or even both of them, and find it faintly, disturbingly appealing.

Damara grunts when you shift, digging her horn into your skin. 

SHE IS NOT A MORNING PERSON.

Kurloz's voice is full of sheathed claws, velvety and caressing. Kharon makes tiny noises as he suckles. You are a fucking mess, rotten inside with pale feelings, even flirting with red feelings. You are filled with a tenderness that borders on pain and the worst part is you're kind of okay with it. The anger you lost track of yesterday has not returned.

Someone knocks. You don't know if you could bear to see anyone right now. You tug at the big sheet of fabric snarled around your legs, hauling it up and over your head.

“You interested in some food, Cal?” Dirk asks.

“Yes,” you moan into Kurloz's side, your stomach rumbling. 

Damara flops an arm against you. Dirk prods at your foot, exposed from when you pulled up the sheet. You yank it away from him, curling into a ball.

“Well, I'm going to go eat, like, right now. So if you want to come with, you better get up.”

Damara slurs something. Peeking out of your cocoon of pathetic confusion, you can see her flipping Dirk off. 

“I don't think that's anatomically possible,” he says.

Then he grabs you by the ankle and hauls you bodily out of the pile. 

“What the fucking fuck, Dirk, there's a _baby,_ ” you sputter.

“Baby's perfectly all right,” he says. “What do you take me for?”

“A sadistic douchebag,” you tell him.

“Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring substance known,” he says. “Now are you going to put on this extremely stylish outfit I put hours of labor into not? You'd be doing all five of us a favor, including yourself and your kid, if you could try to make a good impression.”

“What the hell – did you stay up all night _sewing me an outfit?_ Why the fuck does it involve short pants?”

“You know what? These threads are entirely too swag to grace your body in its present state. When was the last time you bathed?”

Damara choses that very second to start throwing everything she can reach and a few things she can't at you both. Her aim is surprisingly good for someone with their eyes still shut. Your 2X abscond combo turns into Dirk dragging you half-naked across the courtyard to the bathhouse. Once there, he strips you and assaults you with soap.

Two girls in different shades of green are casually, nakedly cuddled together in a big, steaming stone pool. One of them you remember from that time in the workshop, her green egg sitting safe and clearly visible in a basket near the door. They giggle as they watch you and Dirks' epic, soapy strife. You're not sure if you're more horrified at what they're doing or what Dirk's putting you through in front of them. 

“Settle down and just roll with it, fuckass,” one calls to you. “You can't come in for a soak unless you wash first!”

Dirk eventually finishes the most embarrassing scrub-down in the history of paradox space and trips you into the pool with them. They shriek, splashing back at you playfully. The water is shockingly warm. You scramble as far away from them as you can.

“Don't you dare try and climb out of there,” Dirk threatens, scrubbing himself down efficiently. “I will hold you under until you stop fighting me. Don't think I won't.”

“Some fucking palebro you are, threatening to drown me for no fucking reason.”

“You won't drown silly claws!” one of the girls says. “You have gills now, remember?”

You stare at her blankly. She flares a set of weird slits on the side of her neck at you.

“What the fuck,” you say, poking cautiously at that weird gash along your own neck. You'd forgotten about that.

“You probably would drown eventually,” the other girl tells you. Her green sheen is the same electric shade as your sister's blood and her ears are really hairy. “They're just not very efficient, and bodies as large as ours need a lot of oxygen. But if you learn to use them, it'll make swimming and diving a lot easier! We'll have to teach you. Don't try it in here, though, the water's too hot!”

You are saved from any more of their awkward, horribly cheerful conversation by Kurloz ducking through the door. The girls are out of the water in about two seconds, bouncing across the room to coo over the baby. You try really, really hard not to stare at any of their exposed jiggly bits. Kurloz smiles at you over their heads, his mind stroking yours with a brush of serene amusement. Your muscles loosen and you let yourself sag against the warm stone of the tub. It would have been about a million times easier to endure the last half hour if he'd been here the whole time. 

Dirk's eyes narrow. He rinses himself off, hauls you out of the water and throws a towel at you.

The new clothes are admittedly comfortable and might possibly even look good on you, from the double-takes you get as Dirk drags you into the dining block.

“Ok,” he says dropping a full plate in front of you. “What's the deal with you and Kurloz? Not,” he adds, holding up a hand, “red or pale-wise. I mean, how come you relax so fast when he's around, but you're back on edge as soon as you're out of his range? I know stuff between us isn't where it needs to be, yet, but dude, I'm a little put out here.”

“Moirallegience is not a competition, you arrogant shitsack,” Vantas says, glaring at Dirk from the other end of your table. 

“Wasn't talking to you, Vantas,” Dirk says.

“Then don't have your fucking feelings jam in the public dining block,” Vantas shoots back.

You flip him off.

“Quit it,” Dirk says, “And answer the goddamn question. Is he manipulating you with his Rage thing?”

“Don't you think that's between him and me?” you grate.

“If I thought that, I wouldn't be asking. Look, it's pretty obvious that he is, I'm just trying to talk to you about this like you might possibly be an adult.”

“Well there's your first mistake,” Vantas mumbles. 

You flip him off again. Dirk grabs your finger and pushes it back toward the table-top. 

“It's none of your fucking business, Strider.” 

Dirk leans forward, glaring at you over his shades. “I disagree. If you want a chance at being a real boy, you're going to have to learn how to control your temper yourself. You've got a lot of shit to work through and that's okay. You've got all the time you need. Now, I make no pretense that I understand that dude's bullshit clown religion, but we're both Princes so I understand something about how he works. I can see what he's doing to you and I think it's doing you more harm than good.”

“And your methods are better?” you ask, crossing your arms.

 _“I_ am trying to balance your best interests with everyone in the village. That is my whole agenda. His agenda I don't know, but you can bet he has one, and it definitely has to do with you.”

You bare your teeth. “How the fuck are you so sure his agenda is, what? Evil? You're fine, somehow, with Lord fucking English but the clown just has to be evil? Are you jealous Dirk? Is that what this is about?”

Dirk sits back, his face dead still and flatly expressionless. “That is so far from what this is about, it's not even in the same galaxy. That is red-shifting away from what this is about at an accelerating rate.” 

“Lies.”

Vantas slams his hand on the table between you. “I'm going to say this once more and once only. Get a pile, chucklefucks!”

Oh, fuck, that's right. You're not the only people in here. You look around. The scattering of colorful people go back to eating, pretending like they weren't all just totally fucking eavesdropping.

“I will never get over how bad you are at this shit,” Vantas tells Dirk. 

Dirk rolls his eyes. 

“Eat,” he commands you, “I've got a full day planned for us.”

~

His full day consists mostly of hard manual labor

For some unknown reason, an enormous, rotten tree trunk is being sectioned up and moved in the nearby woods. It is nearly as wide as you are tall, and you are goddamn sick of the whole thing before you even touch its powdery bark. You use your Time shit to melt your assigned section into a pile of dirt.

“What?” you ask, as Dirk, Jake and the other people helping stare at you.

“Crying baby Jesus in a dirty diaper!” Jake says, and you have to try as hard as you can not to punch him in the face. Hearing him say things like that out loud is even more annoying than reading them. “That was a might fucking astounding, chum! Can you do that the other way as well? Like, reverse the aging process?”

“That's not what I'm actually doing at all, you ignoramus, but yeah. I could move any part of its time line to now, if I fucking well pleased. I'm the Lord of Time, that's kind of what I fucking do!”

“So, you could bring it back to life?” 

“No! What the fuck did I just say? I'd just be making now the time when it was alive. And it might still be fucking laying here like this, anyway.”

“That is totally rad, dude!” A girl with red glasses tells you. “How's about you nudge this whole thing back into useful timber for us? Like, show us what you can really do!”

It takes a few adjustments to get it to just the age they want. Red-glasses-girl gives you a high five that puts Jake's excited fist-bump to shame. You play it cool and pretend like she didn't nearly shatter your metacarpals. 

The dude in the weird helmet steps up to the log and cracks his knuckles.

“Stand the fuck back, assclowns!” he says. 

You all give him space. He stands there for a moment. Then he cranes around, his mouth set in a moue of distress. Red-glasses-girl gives him a thumbs up from way, way behind you. 

“No,” he says, “Back off _more.”_

Dirk and Jake drag you all the way back to Red-Glasses' location. Helmet-guy turns back to the log, floats the whole immense length of it into the air on a cushion of red and blue psionic power and snaps his fingers.

The bark shreds off, bits flying in all directions. The pale wood beneath splits into boards and disks with a series of explosive cracks. A few of the boards spin free and sail off into the leaves, and then the entire thing falls out of the air, crashing down with an impact you can feel through the leather soles of your new shoes. A few splits and gashes appear in the nearest trees, and a stray, leafy branch falls gently down on top of the pile. 

“Oops,” Helmet-guy says, his shoulders sagging. “Sorry.”

“No, 'Tuna, that was totally sweet! These big disks will make some radical table tops!” Red-Glasses grabs him in a uncomfortably enthusiastic-looking hug and kisses him on the cheek. 

“Is there anyone in this village that isn't stupidly fucking dangerous?” you ask. 

“Look who's talking,” Dirk mutters. 

“I'm not fucking stupid!” Helmet-guy snarls at you, suddenly so vehement he's launching spit-drops from his lisp.

“I didn't say that!” you yell back. “I said you were stupidly fucking _dangerous.”_

“Oh,” he says, perking up immediately. “Well, I fucking well am, assjacket. I'm such an unstoppable fucking badass, you don't even _know.”_

It takes _forever_ to pick up all the boards and cart them in to the workshops. You're saved when, halfway through de-aging another log, one of the green girls from the bath-house shows up and starts lecturing you all about the carbon cycle, forest health and mushrooms' preferred habitats. You smugly re-age the tree until it's practically glowing with phosphorescent decay.

~

Dirk completes his morning of being a royal pain in your ass by attempting to make you eat vegetables. He and Crocker double-team you with a pile of weird pastries stuffed with chopped leaves, tubers and spicy chunks of meat. Okay, so, they're actually pretty fucking delicious, but you're not about to admit that when Dirk is in overbearing asshole mode.

Damara shows up and rescues you, looking brain-breakingly unmurdered in her low-cut work shirt. She and Dirk have a long argument in that weird language only the two of them seem to speak. 

Finally, she turns to you and says, “We build house for Makara. You come help. Hold baby. Look pretty.” 

“Okay,” you tell her tits.

She laughs and kisses you right between the horns, incidentally giving you a long look down her shirt. You definitely see some nipple.

“She is a goddamn handful,” Dirk mutters to you as you follow her up the familiar bluff-path. “I hope you know what you're getting into with her.” 

You shudder, remembering the squelch of blood between your toes.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.” 

You are really glad what he drops it, though the look he gives you says that he won't forget it.

Damara leads you to the clearing where you first appeared, where Kurloz waits for you, smiling.

You end up looking pretty and holding the baby and not much else. Dirk sits beside you on a blanket as Kurloz and Damara have a string of half-silent arguments about a rectangle of white stones. Damara's telekinesis floats them through the air as if they were weightless. Kurloz attempts, unsuccessfully, to direct her. 

You watch Kharon squirm and coo to himself, or possibly to you. His eyes wander from one thing to the next, but always come back around to your face. Your chest knots every time he smiles up at you. He kicks and grins when you poke his tiny feet with their tiny, perfect toes. His grip on your finger is already stronger than it was yesterday.

Dirk sews on something until Kharon starts fussing, then gets up when Kurloz comes over to nurse. He stiffly doesn't look when you end up wrapped around Kurloz and the baby. His arguments with Damara are complexly verbose and totally incomprehensible. He is no more successful at directing her than Kurloz was.

“She insists it's going to be over here, potential drainage problems and all,” he tells you. 

“She's right,” you say, “I've been there.”

You are ninety-nine percent sure Dirk rolls his eyes behind his shades.

“Were you ever there when it was raining?” he asks. 

“No.” 

Damara says something snarky-sounding at him, and he turns back to their conversation. 

Kurloz pets the hair close to the base of your horn. You lean on his shoulder, held fast in the cool armor of his contentment.

~

Dirk doesn't want to let you spend the night with Kurloz. Instead, he sets you up with your own room in the weird split-up building they call the Dorms. You've had to have the names of everything and everyone repeated to you like ten times each, and there are still too many to remember. Your brain is tired of trying.

The room is small and sort of bare, the stone floor covered in multicolored carpets. A human-style mattress with a few random blankets and pillows is the only furniture.

“You shouldn't have a problem with sleeping on a mattress, since your horns are pretty unobtrusive” Dirk says. “Here, you can use this twig to clean your teeth. These shrubs grow all over the place. Just look for pink and green leaves with three lobes, like this.”

You slouch resentfully on the edge of the mattress, chewing the damn twig as Dirk fusses with the wall hangings. It tastes weird and sharp and makes your mouth feel cold inside. You kind of want to be with your clown and your kid, wrapped up in that bubble of not having to feel bad or think especially hard about anything. Barring that, you'd like to be alone for a while. You're not fucking used to this shit.

“Dirk,” you say. “Fucking stop that.”

To your very great relief he does. Instead of fucking off, he drops down on the edge of the mattress next to you and takes off his shades. 

Fuck.

“I meant what I said this morning,” he starts, “About Kurloz.”

“Dirk.”

“If we're going to be pale, you have to let me worry over you, dumbfuck. And that guy is always up to something. He was up to something for aeons before I met him, and everyone who's known him that long thinks he hasn't changed.” 

_“Dirk.”_

“So, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, whenever and wherever you were when he got to you, but dude. You have to let me be here for you now-”

“DIRK. I do _not_ want to talk about this.”

He glares at you, looking as tired as you feel, suddenly. “Don't even start with me,” he says. “You think it's been a picnic for me, having you fight me every single second of this whole fucking day? Would it honestly kill you to not flip out about everything? I told you once before that being friends with people is hard fucking work, and that's still a thing that's true. But you have to try to meet me halfway, here.”

You grind your teeth. “What the fuck makes you think the clown did anything to me?”

Dirk's hand lands on your chest. Your heart gives a little kick under his palm. “Heart player, dumbass,” he says. “I know which you is which. Something changed in you, here, since the last chronological you I ran into. And I'm not happy about it.”

“Why the fuck would it matter to you?”

“You honestly think that I could sit by and let someone damage my moirail? You know me better than that, I hope.”

You pinch your eyes closed.

“I asked him to,” you say, quietly. 

Dirk jerks his hand away from you.

“What exactly did you ask him to do?” he asks. His voice has gone icy-flat and dangerous. Oh, shit. You have a feeling you might be about to fuck something up really bad. You wish you had any clue how to _not_ fuck things up.

“Answer me,” Dirk insists, when you hesitate too long.

“I couldn't fucking sleep. Because. I was angry.”

“And?”

“AND I WANTED A FUCKING BREAK FROM MYSELF ALRIGHT?”

“And you're fine with him just putting the Rage-whammy on you continuously? Because it doesn't seem to me like you're fine. It doesn't seem to me like you act like yourself around him. At all.”

You wrench your eyes open and glare at him. His mouth is turned very subtly down at the corners. Without his shades, you can read worry in the tension around his eyes. 

“Did you think at any point how he might feel about it?” Dirk asks. “You know we have to keep his former quads away from him because of the mindfuck he's run on them both. Like, we're talking untold eons of mindfuck.”

“You're doing _what?”_ you ask. A bunch of shit clicks together in your mind. You feel queasy. “It's that green bitch, isn't it? The loud one he looks so fucking sad around.”

Dirk's eyes go wide and he actually grimaces a little. “Yeah. Her name is Meulin.”

“I can't believe you assholes pull shit like that, and go around pretending like you're so goddamn righteous and fucking kind. Why the fuck haven't you spectacular fucking paragons of morality killed us both if we're so fucking awful we need you to be our fucking jailers?” Your voice rises until you're half-shouting by the end of this speech. Dirk winces. 

“Don't put words in my mouth,” he says. “No one is going to kill anyone. That's something we all decided together. Think about it, Cal. We might be the only thirty four sentient beings in this entire universe. Every single one of us is important, including Makara and including you. We _want_ to keep you alive, unless you force our hand with your psychotic bullshit. But you need to meet us halfway, and not be such a spectacular dick to everyone all the time. Makara needs to meet us halfway and not fuck around in other peoples' heads.”

You sit there in silence a moment, shredding the leaves from the tooth-cleaning stick into a little pile.

“We're also just tired.” Dirk says. “Tired of killing and dying and pain and strife. Don't you ever feel tired of that?”

“Yeah,” you say. 

Dirk tentatively lays a hand on your shoulder. You let him wrap his arm all the way around you, eventually, though you don't allow yourself to lean into him even a little. You'd been thinking of going to find your clown after Dirk fucks off. Instead you fall asleep alone, your head heavy with thoughts you don't want to think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that for their species, lactation is stimulated by chemical signals released from the egg as it prepares to hatch, and by children before they're weaned. This means that anyone in sufficient contact with an egg or baby will begin to lactate. Typically, this means long term, close proximity, especially sleeping in close contact. More info at my [Troll-human hybrids](http://universe-c.tumblr.com/post/38990320832/5i-meta-post-troll-human-hybrids) meta post.


	6. Revelation

You evade Dirk by the ingenious gambit of waking up at the ass crack of dawn, shaking and swearing at a dream of peeling off your own skin. You feel like the most brilliant asshole on the planet when you manage to swipe breakfast from the kitchen without having to talk to anyone.

You find an out-of-the-way little path with a rough wooden bench and a view down toward the bay. It is cooler today, the water breathing wisps of fog from its surface. The sun dips in and out of puffy clouds, the big moon's crescent chasing it up the sky. You wish your new outfit covered your knees. The hair on them is weirding you out.

What the actual fuck are you doing with your _life?_

“What ho, old bean?”

Jake plops himself right down next to you, giving you a jaunty smile. He's got his big fucking orange egg in his arms, and his shorts match yours. You are going to fucking kill Dirk.

“Gay much?” you mutter.

“I'm gay as any fucking thing, chap. Right glad to see you're starting to get the hang of the new planet and whatnot.”

“English,” you say. “I do not feel like putting up with your fucking chipper face now or ever again.”

“Aw, don't tell me you're sore at the outcome of our little scrum,” he says.

“There was no outcome! I was right in the middle of kicking ass and then this shit happened.” You gesture violently at the trees, the sweeping ocean view.

“This bloody well was the outcome, then, wasn't it! Have to say, it's a sight better than all that super deadly red shit taking the mickey out of our former environs. I hoped it would be, and what do you know?”

“Fuck. You.”

“I thought I should really thank you for all the cracking great help you gave me. We couldn't have done all this without you, you know?”

Your head is starting to ache from the sheer horribleness of his presence. Stupid, stupid, dumb, gay patron dude bullshit. You don't even ask yourself what the hell you were thinking. You've asked yourself that _so_ many times, and you've never come up with an answer.

“Just because shit is inevitable doesn't mean it's not also terrible and stupid,” you tell him.

“Like I don't know that! By the low-hanging scrotum of the holy ghost, a lot of terrible shit went down. But it all turned out fine! Everyone's alive again, we've got a whole magnificent planet to explore and now we're going to be dads together. A whole lifetime of adventure awaits!”

“I fucking hate you,” you inform him.

He slaps you on the back in a manly fashion. It's nowhere near as bruising as the backslaps you got yesterday from any of several green, teal and orange persons whose names you refuse to think about at the moment.

“I wanted to commend you, too, on how good you're doing with Dirk,” Jake says. “He's not exactly an easy fellow to deal with. He's really sensitive, you know, but sometimes you have to take a firm hand with him anyway. I officially bolloxed it up big time at first.”

“Yeah, I fucking know,” you say. “You bitched about it _all the fucking time.”_

“Ah, sorry about that,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “We're- oh. Uh oh.”

“What?”

He bounces to his feet. “Hop to it, man! We're needed down in town.”

“Why?” you ask warily. He must have caught some kind of psychic signal from someone. Who the fuck knows what people around here can do.

“Probably just more of Dirk's horseshit melodrama,” Jake says, sounding bizarrely affectionate. “We'll just pop down there and put a stop to it, quick as Teddy Roosevelt's itchy trigger finger. Then we can get out and go for a nice, relaxing hike!”

You trail along after Jake, curious in spite of yourself. It's not like you have anything else to fucking do.

You round the corner of the big building and find Dirk squared off against Kurloz, a few knots of observers standing well back from them both.

Oh, no. Fuck no. Hell fucking no.

Jake grabs you before you can abscond, hauling you bodily into the forming circle.

“You broke something in him,” Dirk is saying. “You can't sidestep me again, clown. This time I _know.”_

I HAVE DONE NOTHING THAT MY LORD HAS NOT ORDERED ME TO DO.

Kurloz stands rigidly straight, arms crossed and head lifted haughtily. His expression is almost bored, though every line of his body is tense.

“You think he was actually competent to consent to something like that? He's like a fucking child! So you're going to do the responsible thing and undo whatever you did to him, or I'm going to make you.”

“Do something,” Jake whispers, shoving you toward them.

“Dirk,” you snap. They both look at you from the corner of their eye, unwilling to turn away from each other. Fuck, think fast. “Uh. Rule number one!”

“Overruled, Cal,” Dirk says, his face a stony mask. “This is too important for me to pull punches on.”

I CANNOT REPAIR. ONLY DESTROY. AS YOU MOTHERFUCKING WELL KNOW.

Kurloz's voice makes you feel hollow down to your bones. Dirk's lip curls in a snarl and he reaches for his sword.

Damara glides out of the crowd and steps between them, Kharon in her arms. The smile on her face promises spectacular carnage if she is not appeased. Goddamn, she is at least as terrifying as either of them, if not more so.

People step up on either side of you.

“Oh my fucking god,” Vantas says, starting forward.

Some yellow guy grabs him and yanks him back. “Don't KK!” he says.

“You can't possibly expect Shithive Maggots Megido to auspitize those two dumbfucks without someone getting hurt!” Vantas hisses. “She has the _baby-_ Oh, fuck me, John, no!”

A guy wearing a long hood and a red egg in a sling bounces up to the Timewitch's side. He smiles back and forth between the two Princes.

“Hey!” he says. “Would you guys mind calming down a little? Dirk, dude, let us help. We're all concerned about Cal, and Kurloz really cares about him too. I promise we'll do our best to fix him.”

“I am not _fucking BROKEN!”_ Your voice cracks embarrassingly at the end of your shout.

Everyone, _everyone_ turns and looks right at you.

You freeze. You can't stand this horseshit for one more second.

You fucking flee.

~

A weight drags you sideways as you slip out of the present, and you find yourself cartwheeling dizzily across the landscape.

You crash out of Time a quarter-sweep in the past and somewhere else entirely.

The weight was your sister's grip on your elbow. She tumbles up against you in the grass.

“Ouch,” she says.

“What the fuck just happened?”

“We seem to have teleported up river,” she says, sitting up. “Three point three eight klicks west south west to be precise.”

You groan. “Why are you always like this?”

She ignores your question. “I assume we moved through time as well? The configuration of the village has changed.”

“Yeah.”

She smiles at you brightly. “Then, unless I'm greatly mistaken, the two of us working in concert can move freely through both Space and Time.”

You groan again, burying your face in your hands.

“Why the fuck were you even hanging on to me?” you ask.

“You looked like you needed some support,” she says. “And since your quadrants were busy duking it out over you, I felt I should step in. I am still your sister, no matter how much you deny it.”

“I had to get the fuck out of there,” you mutter.

“Understandable,” she says.

The wind is strong in the trees above, their trunks occasionally groaning as they sway. You feel jittery and kind of nauseous.

“Do I seem broken inside to you?” you ask.

“You've always seemed broken inside to me. Neither of us was complete by ourselves, not really. Not before.” She sighs. “Perhaps growing up necessarily entails some part of your self dying.”

You sit together, silent. It is still very strange to be face-to-face with her. You are glad she doesn't look like a cherub, like some animate reflection of a body no longer yours

“Caliborn,” she says. “Will you let me take you somewhere? There's something that I want to show you. To help you understand about us and about this planet.”

“What is it?” you ask, suspicious.

“I don't know that you'd believe me if I told you.”

“Fucking great. Your mysterious bullshit is always so reassuring.”

She runs a hand over her face.

“It is a remnant of the previous Universe. A place you will recognize.”

She says it like she knows you're not going to like it. She says it like she thinks you should be afraid, or like she is.

“Fine,” you say. “How the fuck do we work this?”

Working this consists of holding hands and trying really hard not to throw up at the way you can feel your sister warping Space around you. You land somewhere else, a wind-blasted shoulder of the ridge, even further inland than you'd started.

“You need to stop fighting me,” she tells you.

MY LORDS.

“Oh!” Calliope jumps, dropping your hand to clutch at her chest.

You suppose you should be surprised that Kurloz is here, wherever this is, but it's probably your fault. You'd been thinking of that whisper of pain you've seen on his face, craving for the touch of his contentment in your mind.

He is carrying an egg instead of a baby. It is red, your red, like your tongue and lips and blood. You want to touch it. You want to touch _him._

Maybe Dirk was right. Maybe you are acting weird around him, starving for his Rage-whammy like an addict. It should make you angry. Right?

You catch his elbows before he can kneel. He leans down and kisses you lightly on the forehead, his lips warm, the weight of the egg warm against your chest. Your heart sort of swells and relaxes all at once. That kind of presumption should make you so angry. It fails to.

Calliope looks back and forth between you and sighs. “I hate time loops,” she says. “But I suppose needs must. Kurloz, would you like to come with us? I have something important to show my brother. Perhaps your influence will help him not overreact.”

I WOULD BE HONORED, MY LORDS.

“Come on, then,” Calliope says, holding her hands out to you both. “It would probably save energy if you only took us a little way through time. Let me do the heavy lifting. We have a very long way to go.”

You keep your eyes closed against the sickening tilt and rush of the landscape, leaning against Kurloz with mind and body. The egg smells like comfort, different yet the same as a baby. You butt your head against the clown's shoulder when you feel him stiffen, feel surprise and doubt color the surface of his mind.

WHAT IS THIS?

You snap sheepishly out of your cuddle with him, pulling away from them both.

You stand in your bedroom.

Your prison.

You honestly don't expect the shaky panic that overtakes you. Neither do either of them. They both stare at you as you hug yourself, trying to keep your heart inside your chest.

“Why would you bring me here? How did we _get_ here?” you ask your sister.

She looks at you sadly, _compassionately._ “We haven't left the planet. This place is our home. And that is us.”

She gestures at the closed Sarswapagus, the paired chains leading from the wall through a gap in its side.

You've been traipsing around all this Time, blissfully unaware that your incubating self was sleeping here. This planet is yours, was yours and will be yours.

Kurloz falls to his knees before the Sarswapagus, reverent awe overflowing his mind. You don't want it. You don't want to feel like that, here. He reaches out, one hand palming his egg, the other not quite touching the lid's golden surface.

“Don't!” you hiss.

He lets his hand drop delicately, pliant as ever to your commands. He bows his head as if praying before the dormant seed of yourself, inside your childhood cell. You harshly control your breathing. You wish he would look at you. He is preoccupied, not listening to your mind right now.

“What does this mean?” you ask.

“It means we're safe,” Calliope says. “It means the Miles will never reach this universe, or if they do, it will be after this planet is sucked into your session, and long after we and our children and all our descendants are gone.”

“Everything on this planet was _dead_ when we lived here. How the fuck do you know how long from now that will be?”

“You're the Lord of Time, you tell me.”

The idea of winding forward that far, of possibly meeting up with your child-self makes your skin crawl. So does the idea of accidentally going back far enough to run into the being that made this place, that left you here in chains

Calliope moves around the room, examining the empty shelves, the surfaces that will hold your belongings, your computers, your shallow pre-predomination lives. Two juju chests sit closed, smaller than you remember and somehow menacing. The only other object here is the chess board, its red and green pieces furred with dust.

“That is _my_ side of the room,” you tell her, seizing on your irrational annoyance and running with it.

“Oh, I'm sorry!” she says. “That's against the rules isn't it. But wait, I seem to recall that you broke the rules first, and then you destroyed four whole universes just for fun.”

“It was _inevitable!”_ you growl. “So why wouldn't I have fun with it? There wasn't a fuck of a lot else to do, after-”

“What, after you had me murdered and ruined our session? Nothing to do but shoot Gamzee and watch him bleed? You must have been so bored, poor thing.”

Kurloz's shoulders tighten, but he doesn't look up.

“Oh my god, how do you even know about that? He would not fucking die! I just. You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you for putting me through this. I was just starting to fucking relax back there!”

“Well, maybe if you weren't so horrible to me, I wouldn't have to put you through anything,” she says. “You're nowhere near as mean to anyone else.”

“Well, maybe you're an awful bitch in every way and I hate you.”

“That doesn't mean a bloody thing coming from you. You say it to everyone.”

“I do not.”

“Do too. And you know what? This argument is stupid. I'm going to go have a looksee outside.”

She scuttles up the ladder, its rungs clanging a familiar note under her tread.

You look back and forth between the shaft of dusty sunlight pouring down from above and Kurloz's narrow back, his wild hair outlined against the glimmer of gold.

You move closer to him, feeling inexplicably shy and appallingly needy.

“Makara,” you say. “Kurloz.”

THANK YOU, MY LORD. FOR ALLOWING ME TO PARTAKE IN THIS MIRACULOUS MOTHERFUCKING JOURNEY.

“Don't,” you tell him. “It was my sister. I would never want to come back here. Fuck, we're fucking stuck here without her, too. Shit. Will you fucking look at me? Please?”

He turns slowly, mechanically. His eyes are dark and wide in his face. You want to pick him up and carry him far, far away from here forever. You want him to stop looking _through_ you like that, as if he is seeing someone else entirely where you stand. You kneel beside him, take his shoulders.

THIS IS A SACRED PLACE. A PLACE OF BEGINNINGS.

“We were _prisoners_ here,” you tell him. “I fucking _gnawed my own leg off_ to get free of those chains. With my _teeth._ ”

He blinks, and you feel his mind move against yours in a little brush of comfort, of balance. Close to him, you can also smell the egg, calming you further.

“Listen,” you tell him. “No. Okay. Just. Come with me and. We'll go home. And we'll make those village assholes give you back your green girl and everything will be okay. So. Just. Come on.”

Kurloz shakes his head slowly.

I HAVE DONE HER IRREPARABLE HARM. AND I DID IT IN YOUR NAME.

“What the fuck,” you splutter. Your fingers dig into his shoulders until he winces. “Why?”

TO FULFIL THE PROPHECY. TO BRING THE ANGEL THAT USHERED US INTO PARADISE. MY MATESPRIT, MY MOIRAIL, MY DESCENDANT – ALL WERE NECESSARY SACRIFICES.

“That explains precisely jack shit,” you tell him.

DO YOU THINK I DID WRONG, MY LORD?

“I think you're a fucking moron.”

I ACCEPT YOUR JUDGEMENT. HOWEVER, THE PAST WAS ALWAYS INEVITABLE, AS YOU YOURSELF HAVE TOLD ME MANY TIMES. ALL OF US WERE NECESSARY TOOLS TO CREATE THIS REALITY. THE PROPHECIES WERE ALWAYS TRUE.

“They came true because we _made_ them.”

PRECISELY.

You sit back on your heels, your hands falling limp at your sides. Princes really are all fucking crazy assholes, you think. What did you do to deserve being stuck with two of them? Probably being an even bigger, crazier asshole, says a little internal voice that sounds just like Dirk. Fuck, since when do you have an internal voice that sounds like Dirk? Barf.

Kurloz finally moves, his hand coming up to touch your cheek.

YOU GIVE ME ONE THING THEY COULD NOT, MY LORD.

“What?” you whisper.

PURPOSE.

~

“There,” Dirk says, sitting you at his table. It's the first time you've actually been inside their tree house. It's like a bachelor pad, trying as hard as it can to be cluttered to fuck despite the sparseness of their mutual belongings. The wooden walls are close and claustrophobic, guns and swords hung all over them. The single oil lamp casts flickering light across the table. “Mind telling me what the fuck is wrong this time?”

“My sister,” you growl. “Took me to. A place.”

Dirk raises his eyebrows at you, prompting you to continue.

“The place where we were imprisoned,” you say in a rush. “In the future.”

Dirk lays a hand over yours, but you knock it away, irritably.

“Brought back some bad memories?” he says.

“Fuck,” you say, pressing your fingers against your aching temples.

“How'd you get there? Isn't it like, hundreds of klicks from here?”

“When we, ugh, work together,” it almost makes you throw up a little to say, “We can move through Time and Space at once.”

“Shit,” Dirk says, with feeling. “Wait. Did you two take Kurloz up there and then ditch him?”

“Shut the fuck up,” you tell him. “Yes. And fuck you so hard, I panicked, okay? There were two of my bitch sister and they both flipped their shit and he wouldn't leave. Fucking hell, Dirk. He is totally crazy and he had my _kid_.”

“I know,” Dirk says. “None of us could ever figure out how he got all the way up there by himself. Calliope found him, past Calliope – guess you know that part, if you saw her there. We sent some people up from the village to find them and bring them both back here. It was a whole drama. But some good came of it too. He and Damara started spending more time with the rest of us, after, instead of sulking off in the woods like naughty kids. It's been better for them, and for Kharon, to be around people.”

One of the bands around your lungs loosens. You look up from the woodgrain of the table, notice a little face peeking around the filmy curtain that leads into the next room. Dirk follows your gaze.

“What is it 'Tiri?” he asks. “Can't sleep?”

The child is very small, limbs still round with baby fat. Her small horns curve downward like Dirk's before forking at the tip like Jake's. Her fawn-brown hair shines with deep green highlights and she has Dirk's eyes. She troops across the room and buries her face in his knees.

“Hope you don't mind,” he says, hauling her up and settling her in his lap. “You remember Uncle Cal, 'Tiri?”

She nods at you, solemnly. “Your eyes are cool,” she says.

“Uh,” you say. Your train of thought appears to have mysteriously vacated the rails.

“I wish my eyes were two colors, too, like you and Leda and Uncle Sol and Uncle 'Tuna.”

“Your eyes are perfectly fine,” you snap.

Dirk offers you one of his faint smiles, like you've just done something commendable and/or adorable. You are not goddamn adorable in any fucking way and he should fucking know by now.

“You're weird,” Tiri pronounces. Then she turns her face into Dirk's chest. You are apparently dismissed.

“So, anyway,” Dirk says. “That's all in the past for us. I hope some future you apologized to him, 'cause he hasn't seemed particularly pissed at you or anything. Trust me, when that guy is pissed, you know it. So, what else? You still look like you've got something clawing at you in there.”

You frown at him, because that's so accurate. You hate it when he reads you like that. You hate that he's probably put hours of thought into your question already. Fucker.

“It's just. If this is the past. Of my past. What the fuck was the point?”

“Of?”

“Of _anything!_ Like, what does that _mean?”_

Dirk leans back in his chair, reaches up as if to touch his shades, then remembers he's not wearing them. Instead, his hand tucks his child a little closer against his chest.

“It means we failed,” he says. “We didn't escape the game. We didn't make it into a brand-new Universe. Or, maybe we did, but the Universe we made held the seed of the previous one's destruction. That would be fitting, all things considered.”

“So. All of that work and fighting and fucking killing each other across five fucking sessions was just to get us here? And now what? We just hang around waiting for whatever the fuck happens to sterilize this whole goddamn planet down to bare rock?”

“You're the only one who has that option, dude. Think about it. We've got millions of sweeps until this sun even starts to swell into a giant, which Callie assures us it was when you guys hatched. You could maybe get yourself there, but the rest of us will be gone by then. Our descendants, our whole species might not survive that long, or if they do, they may not choose to stay here. Maybe those poor kids will even be sucked into a session of their own. For the rest of us, it's more a matter of how we want to live our lives. Even as limited as your options are when you're one of only thirty-four people on a planet, there's still a kind of terrifying degree of freedom without game goals or quests or unlockables to herd you along. You're not the only one to feel like that, Cal. We all feel like that.”

He reaches over and puts his hand on top of yours again. You let it sit there, let him mesh your fingers together.

“Hey,” he says, “Unless I'm mistaken I owe this you an apology for being such a dick about Kurloz. Sorry, man. Shit was straight up inappropriate. You should've heard the dressing-down Vantas gave us. You probably would have enjoyed it.”

“Part of me really is broken,” you confess. “The part of me that wanted to... kill. Everyone. I don't even really want to kill my sister any more. Even though I still hate her.”

“I know,” he says, squeezing your hand. “Though for the record, I wouldn't call that being broken. Most people would call that being repaired. Sorry it took me so long to figure that out.”


	7. Undoing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the updated warnings! This chapter contains **dubcon**.
> 
> You might also find my [Class and Aspect meta-post](http://universe-c.tumblr.com/post/38928287413/5i-meta-post-aspects-and-classes) helpful background for this chapter.

You take Dirk's advice and go find Kurloz to apologize for ditching him in that terrible place.

Or, you guess, apologize in advance. To warn him. To make sure he brings that bag full of rations and supplies he had. Whatever, something like that.

You find him in your clearing, where his house will someday stand.

All the stuff you'd been trying to think how to say flies out the window because he looks fucking awful. His face is flushed and his eyes are glazed. He's glistening with sweat, his big, blunt fingers trembling.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you ask.

In reply, your skull fills with an unfocused surge of _sexual desire,_ strong enough that it makes you ache between your legs. You gasp, staring at him as the feeling ebbs away. And fuck, even though he's not projecting it at you anymore, your body is still thrumming with arousal, like he flipped on some kind of switch.

He reaches out to you, and, frozen with confusion, you fail to move away in time. He takes your wrist, arranges himself kneeling at your feet, brings his face to your knuckles in supplication.

MY LORD.

His booming, shiver-inducing mental voice is like a whimper. If creepy whispering could somehow convey desperate horniness, it would sound just like that. Fuck, it's terrifying.

ALLOW ME TO BE YOUR VESSEL

I

PLEASE.

He's fucking _begging._ Holding your hand, his dry lips soft on your knuckles and _begging_ you to use his body. Your mind is suddenly awash in visions of depravity.

“You have to do what I say,” you growl.

He nods, looking up at you with half-lidded indigo eyes. He projects complete surrender at you, complete submission to your will.

Fuck, it is turning you on.

“Stand the fuck up,” you say, tugging his hand. “We're going for a little walk. And you. Are going to _hold my hand_ like the depraved slut you are.”

He tenses for just a moment, then stands, his shoulders shaking very slightly. He is careful to shield his thoughts from you as you walk together, probably shocked at your utter perversion. Little does he know, you think, the levels of perversion you've already sunk to with future-him. The longer you are near him, the longer you smell the subtle, delicious smell he has, the more aroused your traitorous fleshsack body starts to get. Your hands are kind of starting to sweat, but his are sweating way worse.

“Hug me,” you demand, pulling him up short.

He gives you a carefully blank look and folds himself around you. You feel like a lesser sun, the light of your will the only thing powering his movements.

You tilt your head back and his face is there immediately, his lips finding yours so gently. Oh, this is so deliciously wrong you're surprised at yourself for even thinking it, much less actually doing it. You shudder all over with each tender, closed-mouth kiss he presses to your lips, your jaw, your cheeks and eyelids. When he gets back around to your mouth, his lips open a little, and they are wet and soft and that is somehow even better.

While you weren't paying attention, his hands have migrated down to your hips. He pulls you tighter up against him, and you can feel something thick and moving beneath his clothes. It presses against your groin and suddenly wet and squirmy things are happening in your shorts.

You break away from his mouth with a gasp. He locks his horns with yours, so you're unable to turn your face away, resting your foreheads together then diving back in with more unrelenting, devouring, chaste kisses. They are tender in an entirely different way than the pale touches you've shared with Dirk, or even the touches you've shared with him before. It is a tenderness that edges on violence.

You make a sound. You'd meant it to mean 'oh my god, what the fuck.' It sounds more like you're enjoying this, like that knife-edge of his restrained strength is arousing in ways you never imagined. He seems to take it as encouragement.

Fuck him, you _know_ he can feel you start to panic when he opens your pants. And, as if he's sensed _that_ thought – he must have – he unleashes a storm of his own desire into your brain as he lays you gently down onto the ground.

“Stop,” you manage to choke and all at once he freezes, fingers going rigid on your shoulders, eyes abruptly snapping open and focused.

He rolls off you, all his skin and all the surfaces of his mind pulled away at once. He curls around himself in the grass, arms crossed tight on his chest like they're all that's holding him together.

You sit up, willing your racing heart to slow. Your bulge slithers red and dripping in the open fly of your pants. You stare at it dumbly.

MY LORD. RUN.

His voice carries a complicated snarl of feelings: reverence and regret, horror and crippling, barely-leashed desire. His need of you is at once viscerally, immediately physical and so abstract it makes no fucking sense. Most of all, he is utterly appalled to have lost control of himself, appalled to be so weak before you.

His mind slams shut again as soon as the words reach you, leaving you alone in your skull.

You think of the way he fed you jerky, and yourself too weak to do anything but sit there hating him and hating yourself for enjoying it. Goddamn it, he's not even looking at you.

Fuck, okay. Okay. You are going to have to do something, here. If you don't do something he'll just keep shivering over there feeling indescribably shitty, and you'll be stuck with this knot of need in your groin forever. All you have to go on are your vague memories of your sister's stupid fanfictions, which may or may not be at all accurate and which you still refuse to admit enjoying, even a little. That and your instincts. Good thing you are an instinctual kind of guy.

You palm your bulge, mostly to stop it from thrashing around like that. It feels shockingly, shockingly good to touch it. You make a completely embarrassing high-pitched noise. Kurloz curls around himself tighter.

“Kurloz,” you say. It's a terrible effort to get the words free. “I... like it when you're. Gentle. With me.”

He unfurls abruptly, eyes shooting open. You are blushing, your face and ears burning, your hips kind of grinding your bulge into your own palm without your conscious direction. He stares at you. You refuse to look away.

I KNOW.

The words come with a wash of desire that makes you whine in your throat. He wants to touch you, needs to touch you so much it's hurting him, but he still doesn't reach for you. He smells really goddamn good. You can smell him from here.

Your clothes are constricting you so you can hardly breathe. You work the clasps of your shirt open with your free hand. His eyes crawl all over you like looking won't possibly be enough. Huh. Is this what it's like to feel sexy? It's weird. He is quivering with tension, leaves in his hair, his simple black clothes rumpled and askew. His bulge moves in his pants and oh fuck, it's like, _huge._

Part of you is really strongly in favor of that fact, and it is a part you don't know and wouldn't have suspected was lurking in you anywhere. The tighter your bulge works itself around your fingers, the less you feel like panicking, and the more you feel like you're frantically searching for something, without quite knowing what it is.

Okay. Yeah. You are going to let him - no, _make_ him - touch you and it's going to be epically goddamn tender and he's going to do what you tell him and fuck, he's going to be so gentle with you. He's always so gentle with you.

“Come here,” you tell him. “I don't know. How. Just. Get the fucking fuck over here and _help_ me.”

He is on you so fast your Timesense can barely parse it. He skims your shorts down, stripping your soft shoes and socks with them. He takes your free hand and presses it down beneath your bulge, sliding your fingertips and his through the wet folds there. _Fuck._ You keen, your hips jerking against the knee he has firmly planted between your legs.

There is a small, bright and desperate eternity in which you can feel nothing but his fingers guiding yours around your nook, helping you learn where to touch, where to press and stroke and how hard. Your bulge fights your grasp on it, trying to take hold of his wrist. You curse him over and over until your words fall apart into meaninglessness.

You are already a mess the first time he brushes that spot inside you, the one that makes you shriek and thrash. You don't know what you're saying. You don't know how you're going to survive much more of this. You don't know how you're going to survive if he stops.

Why the fuck were you ever afraid of this? Fuck, it's _awesome._ He mouths tenderly at the inside of your knee, and even that is awesome. You had no idea someone touching your fucking knee could feel like that.

He tries to get out of his pants one-handed while you're holding his other hand knuckle-deep inside you, and it's fucking ridiculous. You let go of him, take a deep breath and find yourself laughing. He smiles at you, and you don't know how you must look, flushed and spread open in the grass, giggling into hands streaked with your own reddish fluids, your shirt rucked up around your armpits uncomfortably.

You sit up, strip off your shirt, yanking his off his shoulders. You kiss him, sinking your fingers into his hair. It's more wiry than it looks – no wonder it sticks out everywhere like that. That well of tender feelings is as raw and open inside you as the shivery openness of your nook. It's overwhelming and strange, but good. Really good. You trace your nails at the bed of his horn, willing him to touch you with his mind like he's running his hands all over your body.

“Give me everything,” you tell him. “That's a fucking order.”

His mind unfurls around you and it's like being tumbled by a wave. You are swept up and disoriented, and you don't know which way is up or whether you'll ever breathe again until you suddenly hit something.

It is the warm plane of his chest. He gathers you close to himself, scissoring your legs together, his bulge coiling around yours and squeezing. You open your legs without really thinking, just wanting him closer, your hips settled more comfortably together. He rubs his cheek over your shoulder and neck as if he's scenting you. Tenderness doesn't cut when you can feel it returned with such urgency. Your nook feels wet and it should be gross, but his is so much wetter, so hungry and painfully empty. You can feel this because he shows you. You feel how warm and solid you are against him, feel how badly he wants to care for you and fuck you and be cared for and be fucked absolutely raw in return. You want to kiss him. He obliges.

“Everything,” you mutter into his mouth.

He hitches his hips tighter against you until you can feel the soft wetness of his nook against yours, against the base of your bulge. Your bulge goes where you both need it without you even having to think, diving inside him with a sinuous flex.

He is so deeply relieved to be filled by you it drowns out all other sensation for a moment. He makes a breathy little groan as your bulge starts to work against his walls. You have never heard him make a sound before. His nook grasps and works around you, so much fucking better than your clumsy, stupid hands or his skilled ones.

EVERYTHING

You're not even sure it was just him thinking that. He shifts, wrapping your leg around his hip. And then his bulge is sliding through your folds and _in,_ going right for that place that makes white explosions in your skull. You shriek, digging your fingers into his shoulders.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, he's big. It should hurt, but he is too keenly aware of your mind to allow it. The stretch edges just along hurting without ever quite getting there. He is gentle and huge inside you, his mind pressing cool and hot and urgent all against the walls of yourself. His bulge ripples down its length, crashing into your nook like waves pounding the shore. Each ripple slides over that spot and then further, sinking deeper slow and inexorable as the tide. You are practically sobbing for breath. You are leaking everywhere, his arms around you the only thing holding you both upright.

A vast bubble of pressure is building and building in your nook, your bulge, your nerves and muscles and the places his mind lies tectonic against yours. You are disintegrating, shattered and held together inside and out by all his strength of mind and body. Your throat is raw from screaming, his tiny whines and gasps guttural in your ear.

He tries to say something to you, and the way his mind voice is smashed incoherent by the pleasure you give him is what sends you crashing into release.

Things after that are a hazy jumble of hunger and satiation, exhaustion and urgency, dream and awareness. You are losing Time. Your Timesense informs you how many hours it has been (fuck, _how_ many?) and even, vaguely, what you were doing (mostly fucking). You recall tearing through your satchel for your woefully inadequate packet of smoked fish, walking naked in the heat of the high summer, shade striping his skin. You recall the agonizing cold of a spring contrasted with the heat of his flesh, thirst slaked and skin pebbling. The jarring sensation of his bulge dipping a little inside your seedflap, spiraling around the sharper tip of your own and drawing it out, and looking up to find his face still smooth and heartbreaking in sleep.

You are shocked back to yourself when you press your fingers inside his mouth and realize _he has no tongue._

“Fuck,” you say, bolting up as much as you can. You prise his jaw open, looking at the ragged stub that's all that's left. It looks like someone fucking _chewed_ through it.

He has one ridiculously long, thin leg hiked high around your hip. Your fingers were just busy in his nook, fingering him as filthy tender as you can, and his bulge has your hand trapped. He makes one of his small half-noises, his hips working against your sudden stillness.

“How did this happen?” you snarl. You don't know why the fuck it matters, but right in this moment it makes you rage.

He blinks at you, eyes hazy and distant as if he's been drugged. His hand clamps around the back of your skull and he draws you down into a kiss, sloppily sucking your bottom lip and the finger still tucked into the corner of his mouth. Desire rises around you like fog, and you're both so far gone you can barely tell if it's him projecting, or your own body's weakness or just that gutwrenching smell he has. He grabs your hips and rolls you on top of him, and then his nook is sucking you in in time with his mouth. Oh, fuck, you are so close to forgetting everything about what's wrong and who the fuck would bite out his tongue oh god, what would his mouth feel like on your bulge, fuck.

He wraps his legs around you, his bulge spreading you wide and finding that swollen, full place inside you. You cling to that spark of anger, trailing it after you by a thread, hoping you can pull yourself back out of this well of incoherence long enough to. Do. Uh. Something.

When coherence returns, you are _still_ stupidly horny and he still has no tongue and he's starting to swell up like Dirk was when you saw him pregnant. Also, holy fucking shit, you are so _hungry._ For food, not more of his fucking juicy bulge, yet. You tell yourself to go fuck yourself for that thought and goddamn it, this is ridiculous.

“Stop _touching_ me,” you order.

He clings to your wrist, stubborn, preventing you from getting your shirt all the way on. He is lucid, too, thank fuck. And he is, in his creepy, expressionless way, freaking the fuck out. The distress he's projecting at you is in the top five most terrible things you've ever felt. It makes you kind of want to just gut yourself and bleed out in his creepy clown arms.

“Stop _feeling_ like that at me,” you snarl. “I'm coming back! Oh my god. Fuck. Fine!”

You haul him in by his grip on your wrist. Surprised, he falls half in your lap. You can feel the weight of his massive horns when you cradle his face in your hands.

“Shhh,” you tell him.

MY LORD, ARE YOU SHOOSHING ME?

Great, now he's horny, scared shitless, embarrassed and _laughing at you._

“Shut the fuck up,” you order. “I know I suck at this. So. Fuck you, just listen to me and stop fucking feeling so fucking terrible. It's not like you haven't seen me panicking and messed up and passed the fuck out. Or. You will. Also, we're going to fucking starve and die if I don't go find us some food, so just. Fuck, I can come back to the exact moment I fucking leave! I'm the _Lord of Fucking Time!”_

YES, MY LORD.

He pulls away from you, his mind closing and dimming back to an echo of that overwhelming desperation.

You yank him back in. “I don't just throw away things that are mine, you big dumb clown,” you whisper fiercely. “I'm kind of a selfish asshole like that.”

He looks at you, nods and sits back just far enough that he's not touching you anywhere. You want to kiss him goodbye, but it's dangerous.

Fuck it. You're a dangerous kind of guy.

~

“DIIIIRK!”

Your shout echoes back from the edge of the trees. You barely paid attention to what time you landed in, beyond knowing it's one where he's around the village. You'd even fucking walked all the way down here to the crazy treehouse complex he shares with Jake and their brood of wigglers. It looks kind of small to fit very many fucking kids in right now. You hope that means you'll get young, reassuring Dirk, not creepily-old Dirk or creepily-pale-soliciting-you Dirk.

“DIRK YOU SACK OF OFFAL. GET THE FUCK OVER HERE AND PALE ME.”

You think better of that as soon as you say it.

“I MEANT PALE AS IN YOUR PERVERSE DIAMOND STYLE CARETAKING SHENANIGANS. FUCK YOU. BUT NOT LITERALLY.”

“Oh my god, dude, what?” Dirk calls out one of the windows. He's rumpled and bleary-eyed. You woke him up. “You having a she-mergency down there or something?”

“YES!” you roar. You do not give a single fuck what that might mean, as long as he gets his ass in gear.

Oh, god fuck shit. He's pregnant, you realize as he makes his way down to you. It's always so awkward when he's pregnant.

“I just. Need. Uh,” you ramble. Fuck, why did you come to him? It would have been child's play to steal some food from the kitchens.

He gets up close to you, his shades off, his grotesque swollen body wrapped in a brightly patterned robe. You feel clearer, more lucid around him. You mentally review your statements in the past couple minutes and blush. What the fuck.

“You are not,” he says. “You smell like you're in goddamn rut, so if anything you're having a he-mergency.”

“Very funny. Ha ha. Hee hee. Now are you going to take me to get some food, or are you going to just let me fucking starve to death on your path?”

He takes you to get some food. Your ex-guide, Gamzee, is working in the kitchen with Vantas and Faye's dad, uh, Tavros, right. The three of them are in quadrants somehow or something, you remember vaguely. Three children are seated at the table, making an enormous mess out of some kind of dough.

Faye and Kharon launch themselves at you squealing like the uncivilized little animals they are. The third is a child you don't recognize, gold-skinned and magenta-haired, with two mismatched sets of horns, one pink eye and one blue. She peers at you skeptically as Kharon hugs you around your waist and Faye twirls herself around and around under your hand.

“Yo,” Dirk says, “Sorry to barge in, but we're having a he-mergency.”

“Oh my fucking god,” Vantas says, “How many times do I have to threaten your life to make you stop using that term. No one else thinks it's funny.” He's talking to Dirk but he's staring right at you. The looks he and the clown are giving you are weird as fuck. Tavros is smiling at you a little, like he's trying to be polite and not soil himself or something.

You could not give less of a fuck what any of these douchebags think of you.

Kharon's face is still tucked against your stomach, his arms latched around you like you might need some kind of jujubreaker to get them off. Without your noticing, your hand has landed in his hair. It's soft. He mutters something into your shirt, but you can't make it out.

“Come make cookies with us, Uncle Cal!” Faye says, trying to haul you over to the table.

“Oh, hell fucking yes, Uncle Cal! Let's cut us out some cookies!” Dirk enthuses. He gently pries your son off you and herds you all over to the table.

“Why would I? And what are these even supposed to be shaped like?” The baking trays are littered with quadrant symbols, a few crude silhouettes of birds or fish or something, and a whole bunch of unrecognizable blobs.

Dirk chuckles. “Let's see what you got, then, Cal. I am fully prepared to be blown away by your cookie-cutting prowess.”

“That one's me!” Faye says, pointing, “See my horns? And this one's you, Uncle Dirk! And this one's Dad, and this one's Mom, and this one's Drifter, and this one's Notchy, and-” Faye starts pointing to a row of the weird sleek blobs and rattling off names that apparently go with them.

“She's still sad that all the whales left for the summer,” Kharon whispers to you, as if that clears anything up at all. “She likes to talk to them.”

“You're a bad person,” the little yellow and pink girl says suddenly, pointing at you. “You have a half-shadow in the past, and a half-shadow in the future. You're going to hurt her. A knot in Time takes needle and knife to unravel. _You have to undo it._ ” By the end of this speech the girl's eyes are rolled back in her head and her accusing finger has settled a heavy weight in the pit of your stomach.

“How could she know-” you ask, stunned. You shut that comment off too late.

Vantas lets out a string of swears that puts your best efforts at profanity to absolute shame. He plucks the little girl up out of her seat, cuddling her in to his chest, shooshing her.

Some moments of chaos ensue, which end with Dirk forcibly sitting you down out on the deep stone porch, Kharon _still_ attached to you like he's afraid you'll disappear. Which you might, the second he lets the fuck go.

“Mind explaining to me what the fuck that was all about?” Dirk asks, lowering his pregnant bulk beside you and latching on to your other arm.

“Fuck you. I just need some food so I can go back to getting epically laid. Be a goddamn bro like you always fucking claim to be and help me out here?”

You actually are feeling a little bit faint and your stomach is possibly about to stage a hostile takeover of your spinal column or something. You haven't been so hungry since those few days after you first arrived.

“You are in such a good mood it's weirding me out,” Dirk says. “Sorry to ruin that shit but our little Witch of Doom just put a fucking _geas_ on you, dude. So, unless you want to suffer whatever form of Doom a 4-sweep old thinks is appropriate for a bad person, you're going to have to fix whatever it was you did. And unless I want my 'rail to suffer said ignominious fate, I'm gonna have to help.”

“I'll help too!” Kharon says. “Oh, and don't worry too much about the Doom. She Doomed me once by accident and I just ended up falling on the cliff path and skinning my knee.”

“Are you seriously telling me you have a child who can lay fucking curses on people just running around loose?” you ask.

“Yup. Her brother's even worse, if you can believe that. Wrecked our second-best boat because of him.”

“His name's Loki,” Kharon tells you, as if this information is indescribably important. “It was an accident. We were playing wizards.”

“He's been training really intensely to get that shit under control. I'd say self-discipline is a Prince fundamental, but look at Ampora. So, anyway, quit distracting me and tell me what you did. Now.” Dirk punctuates this speech by lacing his fingers with yours and giving your hand a squeeze.

The fight drains out of you in a lurching rush. Nothing feels quite real, still. You wonder for a second if you're dreaming, if you're about to start loosing your teeth or bleeding from the creases of your palms again.

“I killed her,” you say. “The Timewitch, Damara. I killed her. Will kill her.”

“When was this?” Dirk asks, tensing. “Relative to now.”

It takes you a long minute to go back through your own jumbled timeline for the answer.

“Future. Just over a sweep from now,” you conclude. Holy fucking shit, it's a relief to tell him that. You feel so light. You're not sure if it's the double-threat of your diamond and your Rage-stealing offspring, or if sex just does that to you. Fuck, maybe Kurloz sucked all your Rage into his nook and destroyed it.

You would be fucking pissed about how good it feels, but, really, what would be the point? You're not sure anymore.

“Hey,” a deep voice says. “Someone order some motherfucking sandwiches out here?”

They are goddamn delicious. Your usual objections to the weird, dense bread and crunch of greens in them barely even register. Gamzee Makara sits his ass down on the edge of the porch like an immovable object. Faye flops herself into his lap. They watch you with an eerily similar expression of detached interest, looking so much like Kurloz it kind of hurts a little. Dirk waits for you to finish, flicking the crumbs you spray him with off onto the floor.

“So, past-you killed Damara a sweep from now. And why exactly did past-you do that?” he asks, quietly.

Rather than restoring you to your usual emotional balance, food has made you even more sleepy and content. Unless that's the influence of yet another anger-vampire-clown. Fuck it.

“You were all trying to kill me, and then something happened and I ended up here. Flew off the handle. Wanted to kill someone. She made herself a convenient target.”

“When you put it like that, you make it sound like you've ever been on the handle. So, it was really-past you. Like, fresh-off-the-boat-from-the-last-universe-you. Alright. So, how sure are you that she dies?”

You shrug, your memory writhing with the red ropes of her entrails. “I got the fuck out of there. It was. Grisly. And there were witnesses.”

“So for all you know, future you might show up right after past you absconds and save Damara's life with your awesome Time Lord shit. Because that's what's going to fucking happen if I have to march you all the way there myself, mister.”

“Miracles,” Gamzee murmurs.

“That's what does happen,” Kharon says. “Future-you told me so. He told me I could break Rule Two when you get Doomed and tell you. Oh, he also told me to tell you that you'll need to draw some pictures.”

You are struck with a sudden and inexplicable urge to _hug your son._

You do not do any such thing. Besides, he and Dirk have both your arms in a death grip.

Dirk facepalms. “Dave. He and Terezi are pretty much the only contenders in the 'easily-bribed-with-shitty-art' category. He must be the knife. I guess the needle might be me. Or it could be Porrim, Kanaya, Rose or Damara herself, unless it's something more cryptic. Hope that girl never gets better at obfuscating her crazy riddle shit. How many gears, Kharon?”

“Just one,” Kharon says.

“Well, that's good. We'll go right now, talk to Dave and Aradia. See if we can make a plan.”

~

Dave is also terribly pregnant, though you recognize him as the sword-guy you saw there on the beach. He is with the teal-colored Seer, Terezi. He is like a blunted, rounded copy of Dirk, down to his round sunglasses. She is sharp and compact, with a smile like an unsheathed blade. Dave and Terezi both _love_ the picture you draw of Dirk traipsing around with a sword like the big pregnant cockblocking bully he is. Terezi laughs until she _cries._ Dave's chuckles escape him like they're making a break from maximum security. Dirk counters with a brutal critique of your anatomy and line work.

Both of them come with you, Dave with a “Yeah, okay,” and Terezi with a rambling speech about seeing justice served.

Your suddenly crowded party makes its way up the cliffs to the radio-tower building, where the door is answered by a visibly upset magenta-colored woman with waist-length wet hair. She has a red-yellow-magenta egg in one arm, and sullen red-yellow-magenta child clinging to the other. It's not the girl who cursed you, but he looks similar enough that he's probably the brother, the little Prince of Doom.

“What exactly are you all doing here?” the woman asks, glaring squarely at you.

“We're getting Dad un-Doomed and saving Aunty Damara,” Kharon pipes up. He hasn't let go of your hand once. “Hi Loki!”

The child frowns at Kharon and edges a little further behind the purple woman. Kharon holds your hand tighter. Some corner of you wants to shout at the little asshole for being rude to your kid. Kharon's such a cheerful little shit, he couldn't have possibly done anything to deserve that kind of a look.

“We need to talk to Aradia, Fef,” Dirk says. “She in?”

“I'll tell her you're here,” Fef says, and closes the door in your face.

Aradia is also pregnant when she appears a few minutes later, her gravid form elegant in a deep red dress.

“Is there anyone in this goddamn village who isn't swollen as fuck right now?” you ask.

“Yeah, a lot more people decided to give the whole pregnancy thing a go this time around,” Dirk says, one hand sliding absently across his own belly. "I think a lot of them were surprised by how much they like being around kids.”

“Trolls did not naturally rear their own children,” Aradia says, her voice low and musical. “So, yes, it took some adjusting for many of us. What exactly is your errand, if you don't mind me asking?”

They make you explain.

“Ah,” she says. “I've wondered what that particular knot of Time Player activity was. Can you show me the exact location, please?”

Down on the sand, the lot of you stand in a huddle. Dave and Aradia frown thunderously at the cliff-face, and you can feel the subtle pulse of their Time shit rising off them. Terezi makes you go through the story again. She drags the details out of you one by one, down to your dreams and the way you can hardly stand to look at Damara without feeling like you might hurl. Dirk and Kharon absorb every word, their eyes solemn, their hands anchoring you.

“This will take some finesse,” Aradia says. “The struggle between your Time manipulation and hers has left causality thick with scar tissue. We will have to work in concert to undo it. And, I imagine, we will need Feferi and Jane standing by in case we are only partially successful. I will take the time between then and now to study the problem and do what I can from the past.”

“Thanks, Aradia,” Dirk tells her.

“We may need Damara's help as well,” Aradia tells you. “Caliborn, I hope you're prepared to tell her what you've done and bring her to the correct time if necessary.”

“That would be only just,” Terezi says, grin stretching wider.

You think of the way the Timewitch smiled at Dirk and Kurloz, and shiver.

“Alright, then,” Dirk says. “Are we going or what? Kharon, I think you should stay here, buddy. Don't worry, we'll be back before you know it.”

“What the fuck – why would you want to come?” you ask.

“Told you I would march you there myself, didn't I?” Dirk says. “I'm trusting you with a lot here, since I have a little one on board. Don't let me down, man.”

You eye his belly. You think again of the crowd that was there on the beach, their appalled faces turned on you, and the way Damara looked at you right before she gave up. You wonder how she'll look at you if you pull this miracle out of your ass and somehow unmurder her. Fuck, she is going to hate you forever.

You kind of feel like you might need a hug or something.

Kharon drops your hand and squeezes you around the waist tightly. You touch his hair, remembering his baby-self. You wonder if you really will make it back here, or back to that suspended moment where Kurloz is waiting for you. What will they do if you fail?

“Let's fucking go,” you say, nudging your son off of you.

“Better take me with, too,” Dave says. “Two of me are always better than one.”

~

You're not sure if it's so hard to move through Time because you're dragging two very pregnant people along with you, or because of your looming dread of your destination.

Her blood looks very dark, soaked into the sand like that. Her hair is an even darker spill on top, her severed torso small and pale. The worst of it is hidden beneath the heavy blade of stone. You feel hollowed out and numb.

Aradia and another Dave walk up, hand in hand already. Aradia gives you a reassuring nod.

Damara and another you appear. The you has an ugly facial scar and a raised-red, still-healing tattoo, the single gear ringing his wrist bone. Damara is all business, striding up and taking your hand as Dirk scrambles out of her way.

“We go,” she says.

Both Daves take your shoulders. Time unfurls before you.

You have never actually seen Time before, you realize. It sprawls and stretches everywhere, future branches coiling from the present in all directions. The past hangs rooted beneath, a profusion of minor loops whirling like ribbons from yourself and one from Dave to Dave. The eldritch braid of the big loop, the one that makes up your entire life and the Universe's, arcs away above and below you, disappearing out of the range of your perception. It is a world of singing vibration, every surface trembling with the rhythm of its possibility. You had no fucking clue Time was so complicated.

The steady throb of Dave's double presence grounds you all as Aradia starts to unfold the stubborn, buzzing petals of the moment you are trying to repair. They fight her, angrily. You can feel the tug of it outside and inside yourself. It is your power she is trying to redirect, chained to you through the snarled links of your past.

She is only able to hold so much of its weight open at once. Dave and Damara reach in after her, Dave with a series of surgical cuts, Damara tearing chunks free and discarding them carelessly. It doesn't hurt, exactly. But it is violating, an invasion of some part of yourself so fundamentally yours that you barely knew it existed. You could never have imagined someone else touching it, changing it.

Stubbornly, almost involuntarily, you resist.

That piece Time curls tighter. The four of them together are no match for your strength. You can feel the moment when the realize this.

Distantly, you are aware of them drawing in closer to you, their hands on you. Both Daves grip your shoulders, bracing you. Damara's sharp nails dig into your arm.

You have to allow this to be fixed. You have to help them. They will fail without you. You will fail.

Aradia nudges you, showing you which thread to follow. Suddenly, what you're seeing makes sense. You strike before you can think too hard and fuck this all up. You hurl your strength onto the clotted, scarred strands of your past like a meteor.

The knot bursts loose into a snarl of buzzing parallel possibilities. Aradia plucks at one. Dave immediately takes it in his double grip, shoring up its pulse with the strength of his own rhythm. Damara grabs hold of it and _yanks_ with a strength that tears you open inside.

Time changes.

You open your eyes. The rock hovers above, blue and red crackling around it. Crocker and the two magenta girls are hauling Damara's body out of its shadow.

“She's out! Set it down so it won't fall, guys!”

A slicing stream of wind helps the mass of rock settle firmly in the sand, its impact too gentle to even hear over the slosh of the waves.

The Time Player huddle breaks up with Aradia going down the line and hugging everyone in turn. You allow it, unsure what else to do.

“Great! Really great job everyone! I'm going to go talk to the kids about it, now. This will be an important learning experience for them all,” she says, smiling her brilliant smile.

“You. You guys. Deliberately let them see this?” you ask. You feel kind of lightheaded.

“Of course. Such a complex example of Players working in concert is a difficult thing to engineer,” she says. “It was especially important for our little Time players to observe.”

“You honestly think a bunch of trolls and Sburb players are going to try and shelter their kids?” one of the Daves asks you.

“Besides,” says the other, “You told us this was going to happen. We had a whole sweep to decide what to do about it.”

“You have no idea how many goddamn meetings we had to sit through,” one of the yellow dudes standing nearby tells you. “Thanks for nothing, asshole.”

“Hey,” Dirk says, taking your hand. “Want me to come with you to see if she's okay?”

“Fuck,” you tell him, and also, “Yes.”

The other Damara and the other you have slipped away in the confusion. You're kind of glad; they were freaking you out. Present Damara is getting to her feet, shakily, supported by Crocker and the magenta girl she's not busy growling at.

“Uh. Hi,” you tell her. You take a deep breath. “I'm sorry.”

She smiles at you and it hurts you inside.

She takes two steps forward, shrugging off her supporters. Her needle scores a line of fire across your cheek and jaw, barely missing your eye.

Then, she's pressed up against you. She is whole and uninjured, even down to her clothing. The only blood you smell is your own.

Her hands grip your face, her thumb twisting cruelly into the fresh wound. You clench your teeth around your sound of pain.

“You think I not know this coming?” she hisses. “You think because I am girl, because I talk weird, I am weak and stupid, yes? I am Witch of Time! I _choose_ this. I choose this for _teach you a lesson.”_

She does something Timey to your jaw, and oh, it hurts. It _burns._

She licks your blood off one thumb, still stroking your face with the other. Her eyes bore into yours.

“Now we even,” she says. Then she leans down and kisses you. With tongue.

You gape at her as she drops you. You touch your wound tentatively, and find she's fast-forwarded it into a smooth scar.

“I no want see you for a while,” she announces. “No find me. I find you when it time.”

She turns and strides off down the beach, hips working in her short skirt. Holy fucking shit, you think. Dirk was right. She is utterly, completely psychotic. No wonder future you looked so insufferably fucking smug.

~

Terezi leans close and sniffs your face. “Someone has a new candy-red decoration. A little memento of your trial?”

“Courtesy of the Witch of Time,” Dirk says. “You're lucky she didn't do you worse.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dirk,” you tell him. You would have deserved anything she dished out. You are shaky with relief and adrenaline, leaning into his side.

He pats your shoulder.

“Thanks again for your help, man,” he tells Dave.

They bump fists. “All in a day's work for the Knight of Time, yo.” Dave says. “Cal, you totally owe me a favor, though. A big one. No, two big ones. Get used to the barter system dude, that's how shit works around here.”

Terezi cackles. “I have some excellent suggestions for you, Coolkid,” she says.

“Ooh, baby. I promise to listen to every sweet syllable of your lust for the old ultraviolence while you give me a footrub. I'm in a delicate state, here, and guess whose fault it is?”

“Mine!” she crows, sounding completely delighted. They move off toward the dune trail, their banter receding.

“Are you okay, Dad?” Kharon asks.

You let out a long breath.

“I think I need to sit down,” you say.

You end up braced against Dirk's shoulder, Kharon holding your other hand, pressed against your side.

Dirk shooshes you a little, until you stop shaking.

“So. I don't know if she fucking hates me now or what.” She _should,_ if she weren't fucking crazy.

“Nobody knows what goes on in that woman's mind,” Dirk says. “I don't know if I'd want to, honestly.”

“It's okay, Daddy,” Kharon tells you. “Maybe if you wait for her, you can fix things later. I told Loki I was pale for him, and then he ran away but he felt really sad about it, and Uncle Eridan said he's been having trouble with his powers and I should wait because sometimes feelings take time. So, I'm waiting for him like I wait for you.”

Fuck. You don't know if you can take hanging out with your kid if it makes your chest hurt like this.

“Yeah,” you tell him. “Maybe.”

“We can only help people who let themselves be helped, kiddo.” Dirk says. “Don't give up, but don't beat yourself up too much, either.”

“I'm learning how to give him hugs from far away,” Kharon tells you. “But I don't know if he can feel it.”

“Did you ask him?” you ask.

“He won't talk to me.” Hearing pain in his little voice kind of makes you want to go find this Loki kid and smack him one.

“Try it on me,” you tell him. “And I'll tell you if I can feel it.”

“Oh. Really?”

You nod. He pulls away from you, face scrunched comically in concentration. The feeling is subtle, like being papped by a ghost. You can see how it might be easy to miss if you weren't paying attention.

“I can definitely feel something,” you tell him.

He smiles heartbreakingly. “Does it feel nice?”

“It's very... tender.”

“I really want to hug him for real. He acts kind of mean sometimes, but he's really really lonely inside.”

“Well, look,” you say, scrubbing at your hair. “You really should ask him if it's okay to give him, uh. Mind hugs.”

“Mommy does it to you without asking.”

“I asked him to a long time ago. To help me. And you know. Sometimes your... mom does things he shouldn't. He can be an overbearing jerk. And so can I, and so can Uncle Dirk. We're not perfect, you know.”

Kharon looks up at you with wide, solemn eyes. “Oh,” he says, as if that's somehow news to him.

You sit in silence, side-by-side. He appears to be thinking very hard. Finally, you can't take the pressure of all the little gears grinding in his head. You wrap an arm around him. He lists sideways, arms winding around you until he's practically in your lap. He is small and sturdy and he hugs hard. You think of his baby-self, breathing softly in your arms. Your heart squeezes.

You sit there until the waves are washing high enough to endanger your shoes and voices are calling Kharon from somewhere behind the dunes.

“Sounds like it's time for you to run off to lessons,” Dirk says. Sometime in the past however long, he has ended up lying with his head propped on your thigh.

Kharon hugs you tighter for a second, then stands.

“Promise you'll stay for dinner?” he says.

His eyes are really big and sad and orange.

“Okay,” you say, helplessly.

He takes your hand, hooking his smallest finger through yours. “This is called a pinky promise and it means you have to no matter what,” he says. “Aunty Roxy taught me.”

“The pinky swear is an ancient and solemn oath,” Dirk says. “We'll see you at dinner. Don't forget to check your fish-traps.”

“I know,” he says. He scampers off.

“Did I just give my kid relationship advice?” you ask, your fingers finding their way into Dirk's hair. _“Pale_ relationship advice?”

“It was pretty damn good advice, too,” Dirk confirms. “Kudos, dude.”

“I have no fucking clue what the fuck I'm doing,” you tell him.

“None of us really do. Just roll with it.”

“I promised Kurloz I'd be back,” you remember. “I need to bring him something to eat.”

“We'll go up to the kitchens and pack you up some supplies. You'll need a couple days worth at least.”

“A couple of _days?_ Seriously?” You're really not sure how to feel about that. Certain portions of your anatomy seem to be in favor, though those portions also kind of ache right now. You're not sure how the fuck that works.

“Maybe I should have Crocker give you the birds and bees talk before I send you back there. Should be plenty of time before dinner. She has diagrams. They're very informative.”

“Oh my fucking god, no. No, no, fuck no, and no.” You are blushing just thinking about it.

Dirk chuckles and paps your knee like the enormous asshole he is.

“I've been meaning to ask you,” Dirk says, “If you're interested in getting some sweet ink. I finally got the bits together to build a gun, so it won't even take that long or anything.”

“You can do tattoos?” Why are you not surprised.

“Hell yes I can. Gave myself my first one when I was like 13.” He pats his shoulder.

“If you tattoo me with anything as ugly as that, I will fucking flay you.”

“Don't sweat it. I've got a bunch of ideas I've been drawing for you. Think I already know which one you'll like best.”

So do you. But what the fuck ever. Rule number two was always kind of a fucking joke anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once more to my betas, and to everyone who's read and commented! I really appreciate it, guys.
> 
> Follow me on [tumbr](http://universe-c.tumblr.com/) or [Dreamwidth](http://universe-c.dreamwidth.org/) for upcoming projects.


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